


a chaotic heart

by reminiscence



Category: Final Fantasy XIII Series, Lightning Returns: Final Fantasy XIII
Genre: F/M, Gen, Reincarnation, campnano, ffn challenge: diversity writing challenge, word count: 20000-49999 words
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-31
Updated: 2017-05-12
Packaged: 2018-09-21 23:17:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Major Character Death
Chapters: 20
Words: 34,077
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9571193
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/reminiscence/pseuds/reminiscence
Summary: [New world] They're running away, hiding, dealing with their scars - however one wants to put it. Until they strip each other bare, and maybe a social recluse and a runaway street kid can make a life out of the new scraps that gather in between.





	1. Chapter 1

They stop in the street, two statues amidst the chaotic flow of people. And neither is quite sure why they've stopped. She doesn't know him, and she certainly doesn't know anyone with hair colour that shade of green. He doesn't know her either, though he might know other black haired women her height. The blue eyes are rarer, but moreso his grey. She, at least, can argue he caught her eye simply because she's never seen that combination – if she's the sort to pick out such trivial curiosities in a crowd. She isn't. It's something else – danger or familiarity – that's made her look. And he can argue he's mistaken her for someone else but he can't quite put his finger on who.

They stare at each other a moment. The crowd flows around them like they're simply pebbles in the stream but that only lasts for a fragment and then the boy starts as though someone's elbowed him in the ribs on the way past. She narrows her eyes; it was a brush against his shoulder and nothing more, from her view. But the boy is jittery. And covered in grime a good shower won't simply scrub off, though to the unobservant observer, he looks clean enough. She's seen far worse stumble into the bar at which she works. But not so jittery.

And, for some inexplicable reason, she is annoyed. Oh, she can explain it away to herself if she wants. He might have recognised her under the dyed black hair and plain suit because she hasn't done anything else and she's not hiding. Not really. She's just sick of people staring, of people whispering, of people following like lost puppies or trying to poke little toothpicks into her hide. Or maybe that's her own paranoia.

In any case, his jittery stare vexes her and she snaps at him. Politely, because he can't be more than fifteen and that tames her tongue and fist. She snaps: 'What is it?' instead of something more vicious, more crude, and her fingers only flex and unflex as though they'll drain the tension from her brow.

Though she may as well have punched him in the face for how he jumps. His grey eyes flicker left and right when he collects himself, left hand clutching at the cloth of hooded jumper that covers his chest. _Silly boy_ , she thinks, somewhat scornfully – but it's a forced scorn. The action is somewhat cute as well, like a parent having snuck up on their child. But she has no place for such thoughts so she discards it immediately. 'What is it?' she asks again.

'Ah – ' The meaningless sound falls from his lips, followed by nothing as his mouth opens and closes, and then another: 'ah…' He's still glancing around, as though there's someone else who's stopped on the sidewalk aside from the two of them, and he can escape her scrutiny.

'I'm talking to you, green-hair.' Like there's any doubt, and to her irritation, it doesn't stop his eyes from darting around, like an electron bouncing off the crowd. In fact, she seems to have excited his panic.

'I – ' He's stuttering again. For some reason, the stuttering reminds her of something, but it's a vague and formless thought she likewise sheds. 'I'm sorry!' he suddenly bursts, and then he's propelling himself away and she sees only stained sneakers – and not only stained, and worn, but looking like they've taken a knife to their sides at some point – before he's vanished into the crowd.

She shrugs and continues on her way, casting off the encounter as well. The people are a chaotic flow that don't touch her again, and the surrounds grey and still. Lamp-posts not yet flickering beneath the afternoon sun. Posters tacked clumsily to the wall, of ads and sales and missing persons and none of them concerned her so she gave them a cursory glance some days and today not at all.

And the boy does not look either, because he's afraid to see his own face staring back at him.

.

She forgets the grey eyes staring until they are on her again. At the bar where she's extra-vigilant, waiting to catch someone's hand creeping up her leg so she can snap their wrist and suffer no loss for it. Except she's caught a different gaze, and it's that boy again: green haired, grey eyed and dressed in that same hoodie and baggy pants and falling apart sneakers. Still nervous as a tick but managing to hold a conversation, it seems. Though it's less talking and more listening to instructions, it seems. He's away scrubbing at the tables soon enough, without a wrinkle of disgust at the knowledge of what happens on – or beneath – them.

He's not staring at her anymore as well, but she keeps an eye on him thereafter and he feels it, because he constantly looks up: to the bar, to the staff, to the people who trickle in before the flood and she suspects he's to be gone before that flood because he looks too young to be in a bar during serving time and that'll get them all under the fire of he's caught.

And she's right. He does disappear before the manager's yelling at her to pour the first glass and she's doing it, watching that dull yellow lick the edges of the glass. She fixes glasses one after another until someone else comes to take the bar and she's called elsewhere herself because she's not supposed to be behind the bar in the first place and that's a shame, but she takes what she can get and less from certain others: those who stop to stare, because they're imaging what's below her dress pants and shirt, or her dyed black hair.

But they're usually adults. Children don't look at her with such curiosity because they have no need. Except a few. Those whose souls she'd taken. Whose souls she'd saved. And that child is hardly the epitome of a saved soul, she thinks. Does it bother her? Not really. She's steeled her heart to such things. Long accepted she can't take the world's burdens on her shoulders and that she's never wanted them anyway. She's selfish like that, and if selfishness is what keeps her from breaking into immeasurable pieces, then so be it. She knows a selfless man who broke and she can never do what he did and she knows it. She can only drown in black and white and colours and crowds and the glass of wine she allows herself when it's closing time, amidst the chatter of the full time crew.

And she doesn't wonder aloud as to why the green haired child is cleaning the tables again. She can feign disinterest if they look at her, but they don't. Someone else asks the question. And the owner replies. Just like she expects – like they all expect, really, because he has a habit of picking up strays in more ways than one, with his staff and with his visitors as well. It's good in some ways. She's as comfortable as she gets. And sounds like the kid's avoiding…dirtier work. Or at least lowering the hours with some good honest pay. But it's bad too. Attracts the wrong kind of people. People who hunt strays. Who use them till their heart's content because society and pretty names aren't backing them up. She's fine. She's safe. The regulars know not to mess with her too badly and a sore wrist will push the point in for the others. The kid though? He's probably screwed, if he hasn't been already. But the manager shrugs and says he can only do so much, and it's true enough. Did more than enough by offering a street kid a pittance job, in her opinion.

And not a shred of that has anything to do with why she's caught his eyes on her more than once.

But he's a child and hardly threatening, whatever truth or delusion he's seen under her disguise.

.

In the end, it's an accident three weeks later that gives her the puzzle pieces she needs, and she's been pretending she doesn't care but when someone's knocked a jug of something over the kid and he's rubbing his eyes and something's glinting strangely in the puddle that chains him, she admits to her curiosity and stares hard at him.

At one eye grey and the other a dull emerald green.

At the contact lens lying in the puddle, out of place on a poor homeless boy.

He knows she's seen, because he gives a cry in the back of his throat and snatches up the contact lens that's fallen out and weaves through the crowd like a fish, and she wonders why that green eye is so significant, why that _boy_ keeps on catching her eye and she his –

And then it hits her: the absurd idea that won't let go until she's proven it wrong without a shadow of doubt and she can't. She can't because she's dyed her own hair so who's to say he can't do it too? He's gone a step further with the contacts and that's the only proof she has, and the proof she doesn't need because now the puzzle is clawing at her and she wants an answer now.

So she weaves through the crowd herself and into the bathroom for the staff at the back, where she's so sure he'll be. And he's there, trying to put the contact lens back in but his hands are shaking and she seizes his wrist to stop even that clumsy move.

She has a theory and it's insane and most of her doesn't want to believe it but there's a small part that does. So she just spits it out. Spits it out so he can crush her little wild fantasy and they can both get on with their lives – or affirm it. _And then what?_

But it's too late. 'Hope? Hope Estheim?'

And he jerks and tries to escape, but only loses his footing and dangles limply from the wrist she still holds.


	2. Chapter 2

She stares at him, and after a fashion, he at her. He manages to find his footing first, and he has to because he's not strong enough to drag her down by weight alone in youth and she doubts the academic he became in adulthood in the old world will do much better in that endeavour. So he straightens, and stares, and finally the puzzle that's puzzled him like he puzzled her clicks into place. 'L-lightning..?'

She wonders what clinched that realisation. The way she'd said his name, reminiscent of when she'd awoken after her crystal sleep and chased after Snow in Yusnan? Or was it the hair? The manner? The way she'd gripped his wrist. She doesn't remember having done so before, but with two life's memories and the timeless Valhala to recall, there is much forgotten. She's surprised she remembers how she'd addressed him that first day, until, reminiscent of her own words over a thousand years before, he'd said: "Call me Hope."

He seems to have forgotten that moment though. He's called her Lightning, not Light. Not Claire either, but none of the former l'Cie called her Claire, except sometimes Serah and that was because she'd been Claire for twelve years of Serah's life before things changed.

And she's Claire now, in her new life where the scraps of memories from the old world only know her as Lightning or Saviour and Claire Farron is a blessed anonymity. And she corrects him, even though it's just the two of them and she's sure to hear anyone too close to the door. 'Claire,' she corrects. Then, as the shock decides it wants to get a word in, she adds, yanking his wrist a tad: 'And what are you doing here? Like this? Where are your parents?'

Because she's positive they've been reborn. She even checked: three of the few people she _does_ check on when her memories washed over her at twenty-one. Some coming of age that was, she'd thought at the time. Still does. And the whispers of Saviour that'd practically haunted her footsteps suddenly made sense. She still doesn't remember most of them. But the important people she seeks out, makes sure they're safe. Only Caius is missing and she knows why. So something's happened within the last two years to change things. And she wants to know what.

He bites his lip and looks anywhere but at her – as opposed to that scorching stare that wouldn't leave her alone before. 'Please let go.'

She's still holding his wrist. His fingers flex, then extend. Into a fist, then open and flat like a yoyo will bounce back into it. 'Answers first,' she orders. He's different. Very different. Like the child that had rubbed her the wrong way, those first few weeks as l'Cie. The kid who hid from battles, who ran away from memories. Except there's something wrong with that description as well and she can't quite put her finger on it.

He starts laughing before another pieces of the puzzle slips into place. A laugh that's all too familiar: that echoes in the backdrop of her nightmares, and it cuts off the moment she recognises it. With a thud. She's dropped the wrist in her surprise. Become slow.

He slips away from her before she can catch him again.

.

She has ample time to think in her plain, one-room apartment. Serah describes it as a box when she visits, and it is. There are only two doors and one leads outside. The other separates the bathroom from the living space. But that's all she needs and it's fine for her: a place to smoulder through life until the fire finally catches light.

The wrong sort of fire, in this case. Bhunivelze should be deep in the unseen realm and yet that laugh had been distinctly his. His when he'd doused Hope's soul and stepped in: the perfect space-filling, ignorant God. She wonders if he was lying, sometimes, when he says he has no understanding of human emotions, of hearts, of souls – but she knows it's not a lie, ultimately, because a God blind to nothing and capable of all is impossible to fathom and impossible to defeat. A pinnacle of perfection that exceeds all natural laws, and it was only Bhunivelze's deficiency in understanding humankind that allows the miracle to prevail.

Or, perhaps in this quieter and tamer world, she's lost the power to fight such things and simply accepts them. There are lots of Gods, now, and lots of religions. She follows none of them herself but hears of them: knocking on her door, standing on the streets, streaming to their temples and churches and mosques and perhaps she's generalising there but they don't really concern her. Unless they grow as fanatical as the group in Luxion. Or their God happens to be Bhunivelze or Etro, or their Saviour the woman with rose-coloured hair.

Of course, all three of those exist. It frustrates her but Bhunivelze in particular has escaped true death – the sort where no-one recalls even a wisp of his name or being – but it's part of the choice they've all made and fought for, to remember their past and Bhunivelze is a part of that past. He's harmless as a belief that's drifted through from old memories, so long as his devout followers cause no trouble but Hope – Hope is an entirely different tale, and she's never even _considered_ the possibility that she may not have separated the two as thoroughly as she'd hoped.

More risky, and more bearable, a thought was that it was simply memory – muscle memory – at play. A hundred and sixty-nine years as Bhunivelze's puppet, and the years before that she'd slept in crystal stasis for… They were all different, in this new world. All carrying the scars of the past they'd refused to leave behind. She's seen Snow's scars more prominently than Serah's, and whether that's because Snow had five hundred years on her sister or because he's always worn his heart on his sleeve is anyone's guess, and an unnecessary thing to puzzle over to boot.

Hope is an entirely other matter. She'd been so sure she'd saved him. Still wanted to believe she had. But the hope she'd met: clearly hiding from something and willing to go so far to do it – it might be unrelated to the past, some present she can't grasp without more information. It might on the other hand be that past, and either way, she has to see him again, and know.

.

She is surprised to see no Hope in the bar that night. The manager simply shrugs and mutters something about kids drifting till they find a more permanent place to settle down. She reads that more deeply. She has to, because what else can have prompted him to leave except their little confrontation in the bathroom? And it frustrates her that she's waited until her shift to check, for simple ease, and now she has to work till seven the next morning before she can look for him again.

She's fairly sure that, if she just explains the situation, the manager will give her the night off. Still, she doesn't. She waits the shift through instead. Leaves less bruises than normal because she's distracted by thoughts: thoughts of Hope, thoughts of Bhunivelze, thoughts of her own nightmares…

The men mutter about the wild waitress of the bar being a little tamer and think they can get a collar over her head this night. They forget waitresses have always been off limits, whether it's the person themselves or the bouncer, and they forget she has an eternity of combat experience under her belt. Her distraction is no loss to her safety, though the feeling of their hands on her bare thighs makes her skin crawl when she finally recognises it, after the screams of pain and profanities and the demands for a noose around her neck. And maybe she's gone too far, too. She'll find out tomorrow because she can't wait a second longer than the end of her shift and she's out the door before the clean-up is thrown at anyone – or her.

She's still not sure where to start searching, or what she'll do with the answers she's searching for. She wanders aimlessly for a bit, staring at the missing people posters more diligently than she ever has before and not spotting one with his face on it – but why would she? They're miles from where she knows the Estheims to live and Hope's not the hope of mankind any more.

She can only imagine Snow's reaction to all this when he finds out. And she doesn't doubt he will. If not from her directly, then from Serah. The cost of her distraction is control and no way she's going to slip past her sister like this.

It's too bad Hope did manage to slip past her. _Or Bhunivelze_ – and she brushes that unwelcome thought aside because it's a nightmare and that's all. False. For both of them, and the shock is her fault for not considering, for not even _thinking_ of how the others handled the onslaught of memories of their past. There was only Serah, and Snow. And the others…she'd looked them up, confirmed they were alive, and then just left it at that. And they've all done the same, not seeking out each other – except Snow. He found Serah and this time they're married but they're not the cute happy couple from Bodhum before the Pulse fal'Cie had butted in, and it's depressing to watch them sometimes because she wants him to be the idiot he always was and wants her to be the sweet, innocent little girl that needs protection and maybe she's been thinking of Hope like that as well, the scared boy who'd lost his mother and trailed after her like a lost kitten trying to sharpen its claws.

It's her mistake. Again. Serah wouldn't have become a l'Cie if they hadn't argued about Snow. Snow wouldn't have become one for chasing after her, and Hope wouldn't have had to chase after Snow and be swept up in it as well. Of course, she knows Hope would still be on the Purge train, with his mother. They'd fall off Hanging Edge to their deaths, or be sent to Pulse for a slightly better fate. He'd have Airwing with him, probably – actually, she wasn't sure but boomerangs weren't exactly common and the fact that he'd actually known how to throw it to some effect meant he'd had some experience with it, so logic dictates he'd brought Airwing from Palumpolum. In any case, there was no guarantee he'd have survived.

She sighs. That was a thousand years ago. Mistakes she can no longer regret because she's seen the ripple of change up and down the timelines, thanks to Serah and Noel and Caius and Yuel and Snow, and even Hope. Trying to keep the guy alive when every other paradox seems to end in him dead. But that's all over too. Echoes of a past that've dug their roots in deep and she's a fool to let someone else's scars shake her when she's got scars too.

Still. That laugh. _Bhunivelze._ Nightmare incarnate. And until she can irrevocably convince herself of the truth, it'll haunt her.


	3. Chapter 3

He trembles at the echo of his own laugh, but it's far too late. Always has been too late. Before even the flood of memories sometime in his fourteenth year. They only explained: explained the cycling between detachment and a scorching fire under his skin. And then it got worse. Memories building on shapeless nightmares, giving them form, until he knows it's more than a nightmare that'll never come true.

Funny how a moment of weakness and going home manages to damn him over a thousand years later, even if he's going on his father's word for that one. But the fantasy will have collapsed eventually, anyway. So few people remember the old world but there's still a lot of them. Enough of them to solidify the existence of that old world, that old life he can barely recall but knows is there, like a documentary of someone else's journey he has to watch again and he just can't bear the thought.

He can't bear a lot of things, but there's something about the chaotic nature of bars that's almost…comforting. Inhibitions stripped away. Fights just waiting to break out and yet there's decorum and a big net holding everything in place.

And then there's Lightning, who just slices every silk thread binding something. Who goes up against a God and wins, and somehow manages to salvage his soul in the process.

_You'll be the last soul I save._ Or so she said.

He's a little disappointed she doesn't chase after him, but relieved as well. Relieved because she must have seen, must have understood – and once upon a time, he might've known her well enough to know whether she'll let it go or chase the little tidbit he'd unintentionally let escape to the ends of the new earth. And…at least she can understand.

.

She doesn't understand. Not a bit. Not even after looking Hope up in the library, and calling his parents too. Oh, she gets a story by the end of it. And a few ideas of where to start looking. But she's also let slip that she's seen him and she can only hope Bartholomew can manage to convince his wife not to jump onto the next train.

He seems resigned when the conversation dies and she counts her change and makes sure she has enough for a day ticket, or if she needs to change the notes she's put aside for grocery shopping instead. Part of her hopes Nora Estheim will show up and do what mothers do and whip the situation under control – and then she just shakes her head and scolds herself, because, really, when had Hope become a "situation" again?

_I'm thinking too much._ The consequences of no longer having monsters to fight every step of her life, she supposes. Except she's usually thinking about what _she's_ doing: whittling away as a waitress in a less than reputable establishment. But she's tried other things. Security. Desk jobs. She's been tempted to join the army too, but Serah got wind of that idea and guilt-tripped her into avoiding that particular profession.

And now she's hunting a sixteen year old and a ghost from her past, and who would have thought? But he's not the first person she's searched for, and not the last, and at least she has a search perimeter and the means to cover it all. _Forget the confusion_ , she tells herself. _Just focus on finding him. Then getting his story out of him._ And then, after that… whatever comes.

She skips apartments and homes and quaint little coffee places. It's quite obvious Hope has no permanent shelter at the moment and small quiet places aren't really his thing. 'He'll make his own noise and clutter if there's none there,' his father had said, and she knows there's more than the face value of that statement but she'll take face value for this little job. Though it makes her wonder why. Something his parents aren't able to tell her. Something she'll have to find out himself. Though she does wonder if she'll get a well-deserved: 'why do you work at a bar?' in return.

At least there aren't too many bars in the big city. Not so many that she can't question them all, at least. And green is a distinctive colour to dye one's hair. Not that they've had much practice at disguising themselves. Might've helped in their tenue as l'Cie but not one of them had thought to try. And a quite hair job isn't going to get her out from under the scrutiny of the mighty Bhunivelze, is it?

_I need to stop thinking about this._ She goes back to the mental checklist in her head. Fresh out of bars and other similar establishments in the area, but there are still a few places of worship she hasn't checked out yet and then it's back on the train to a new quadrant. She's a bit more reluctant now, but it's for a cause and if she can bear wearing a pink frilly dress – Serah's choice, of course – to Serah and Snow's long overdue wedding, she can do this too.

No results and winds up on the train again after all, but finds him in the first stop off the train. At a church, with its high windows and yellow light streaming through and shadowed pews with rows of people sharing a voice as they listen to the priest's sermon.

Hope is sitting on the pew closest to the door, and she stands behind him because what else can she do? Leave and risk him slipping away _again_ – but she also can't force a scene. Not here, where the people look so calm, no matter how uncomfortable those blank faces make her appear, and how much worse it is to see _Hope_ with an equally blank look on his face. She can't tear her eyes away though, for he'll melt into the shadows and disappear and so she just stares at his hunched back and counts silently. Picks up some convoluted pattern from high school she's surprised she hasn't forgotten for its uselessness, but it's there and it keeps her on her toes. Makes her backtrack a few times too, and start over once, but she's still here when the sermon finishes and people start to leave.

And she's still there when Hope is the only one left sitting, and the priest and his – disciples? – drift over.

'Hope,' she says. She doesn't want them coming closer, wandering why they haven't left or, worse, preaching about a God she'll never face again. And she can pretend to be a relative, or a companion, or something, anything, that'll take suspicion away from one friend searching for another and that's not wrong. Does pretend. Waves them off and puts a strong, comforting hand on the teen's shoulder. 'Let's go.'

He stiffens, then jerks forward but not very hard and she easily holds him in place. 'Lightning.' And this time his tone is flat, and without the stutter.

She might have a better idea of what he's thinking if she sees his face, but it's unlikely. She saw his face before, and that hasn't told her much. His right hand had told her more.

'Claire,' she corrects again, before glancing at the priest and his men. They haven't heard. It's a Christian church in any case so it shouldn't mean anything to them if they do – but churches are churches to her, and she remembers Etro's, and Bhunivelze's, all too well. It's probably worse for Vanille and Fang, and she would've thought Hope as well and yet here they are. She'd assumed too much.

Hope is still again. Staring hard at the pew in front of him, she presumes. 'Come on,' she says, as gently as she can manage. 'Let's go get something to eat – ' She's deferred her lunch and it's worked to her favour, but that doesn't mean she won't have to get a bite at some point. 'And talk.'

His breathing hitches. 'That's crazy.'

Her lips quirk. That's Hope-talk for "you're an idiot" and quite reminiscent of their first time alone.

'I can take on any god,' she whispers, in his ear. Probably not a good idea to let the religious sort hear her say that. They'll probably miss the context. 'Whether that's the real deal or a phantom in our minds.'

It's not a lie. She can. She has. But she's trying to soothe her own nerves as much as Hope's and just because she's capable of doing something – or was, once upon a time – it doesn't mean she wants to ever have to again. But she'll do it again. She knows she will. She does, in those nightmares, picking up a sword that no longer exists in this world and charges straight in. Of course, that clumsy strike doesn't stand much of a chance without magic and hope and a few other things to back it up and she doesn't need to see the end to know how it winds up.

She's not the Saviour anymore, but she can pretend.

And, apparently, she does a good enough job, because Hope lowers his head and whispers an 'okay' and that's a small victory for her.


	4. Chapter 4

She finds him again, and it's a big city and lots of people and not even another bar and he's got no idea how she's pulled off the near impossible, but she has. She has and it's her hand on his shoulder and her voice in his ears and why can he only recognise one of them and not the other? It's not fair. He knows she's gripped him like this before but her touch, her grip – they're still unfamiliar. But her voice is another matter. He knows it. Thirteen long days, hearing nothing else. And that feeling from the bathroom in the bar stirs in him again but it's quickly doused by relief.

He fights her a bit and then follows meekly, because she is the Saviour and he really does want to be saved. Never mind the cackling voice from not too long ago that points out how she's failed – no, that's not true, is it? He does mind. Very much. But she has failed, and he's got a mixing pot of emotions to feel about that, and not all are his own. _He_ wants to throw it in her face. He's torn between hiding behind her and hiding from her and in some twisted balance with it all, he's tagging along like her coat-tails and it's supposed to feel nostalgic…except it's not.

.

She glances behind her to make sure Hope is following. It's nostalgic: in Vile Peaks when he'd chased after and he'd checked on him only because he was a constant annoyance to her, breaking her surveillance – and then Odin had almost cleaved the boy in two and thrown it in her face that she did in fact care about him when she leapt to his rescue.

Now it's a new world and they barely know each other, but over a thousand years' memories can't just be washed aside and she still cares. And Hope feels something too because he follows. She doesn't know what he's thinking though and that unnerves her.

He ran from her last time and now he follows without even a restraining hand. Even when she stops at a fast food stand and orders a boxed meal each. She doesn't bother asking what he'll like. It only occurs to her afterwards that it'd have been more polite but the food is as much of a distraction as it is a necessity, and anything off the street stands is bound to put a bit of fat on him. She's judging off his wrists, of course. She can't see much of his frame with the hoodie he's adorned.

'Here.' She thrusts the box at him and unwraps the burger in her own, looking around. Not an area she frequents, but there's a rather large park nearby. Better than eating on the street. Better than accosting themselves in a café or restaurant and having Hope cause a scene like the one in the bathroom –

She winces and cuts off that thought. She's practically asking for a scene, but what else is there to do? Pretend she didn't see what she saw? Pretend she's not terrified on some deeper down level, and worried for several layers on top? Though she is pretending. She knows she's pretending, even if they haven't had a proper conversation yet. She's pretending by searching him out. Pretending there's no Bhunivelze lurking in the shadows because no way in hell has she just brought the dead god of light some lunch.

She's taken a few steps in the direction before she realises Hope's shadow has slipped away from her. She turns back, and he's staring at his box – or through it. His eyes are glazed. 'Hope?' she asks.

He blinks at her voice but doesn't answer her.

.

The box itself is insignificant, but the food is warm and his hands have been cold for far too long. He can count the years, if he really wants to. He doesn't, and in any case it's not a fair count because he's discarding his new life, when he'd steal his father's coffee just to burn his fingers on the mug or when he'd iron holes into all his gloves because they wouldn't retain the heat. Or when he'd gotten too close to the heater and had to walk around up to three weeks later with hands well-padded in aloe vera and gauze. He gave up on gloves some time after that and his hands have felt even more foreign since.

Now they're temporarily warm again and he marvels at how a cheap meal from a street vendor can accomplish it. But he lingers too long. Lightning vanishes into the indescript crowd, and then returns with a look of concern on her face and it's so _wrong_ – not wrong, he corrects himself. Right; it's right. It's the blank slates and flat notes from the both of them in the last thirteen days that were wrong.

'It's just a cheap meal.' And Lightning sounds oddly uncomfortable. He stares at her. She stares at him. 'Nothing to get sappy over.' She throws it in almost as an afterthought, and then he lifts a hand to his twitching lips and understands what she means.

He is smiling. Over a cheap boxed lunch brought by the Saviour – by Lightning. He laughs at himself, and his laugh sounds foreign to his own ears, but she doesn't start this time. Instead, she takes his now freed hand and leads him down the street, and he follows on autopilot, wandering when a disgruntled God will make themselves known again but enjoying the foggy solace in the interim and marvelling at how simply he's attained it. He hasn't managed that since the flood of memories at fourteen.

.

Hope is laughing. Again, except it's a different laugh this time. Not the laugh from the Ark, when he'd conceived that plan with the fireworks and she still doesn't know why Hope – or Bhunivelze – chose such a garish plan to nudge her towards. In any case, she fails to see what's so amusing about a burger, small serve of chips and a canned drink but it lifts her heart so she's not too concerned. It's different to the low, echoing laughter of Bhunivelze. It's a laugh that she's heard before and yet it's almost foreign – and why not? The last time she's heard Hope – the real Hope, or at least the Hope that is definitely real – laugh is back when they'd travelled together as l'Cie.

She's not so sentimental that she'll let that thought slip from her lips, so she just nudges him along. He doesn't resist her grip this time. Just follows amiably, and a part of her entertains the thought of the he in the bar being an apparition like in his man-made Ark and this the real soul. But even that is a complex answer: the balance of the innocent fourteen year old swept up in the Purge, the Pulse l'Cie, the adult who became a researcher than humanity's hope, the ancient destroyed by despair, the remodelled form that became Bhunivelze's puppet and now, the reborn teen with who knows what going through his mind. And the middle of the street isn't the best place to ask.

A park isn't much better, but there are small pockets of personal space: knots of children playing on the equipment, knots of people of all ages having picnics, and the occasional solo person or couple looking for a place to settle down. She takes one of the empty park seats, more designed for parents to watch their children playing on the swings but the parents have already appropriate a bench of their own and the two of them need a place to sit down.

She sits, and pulls Hope down to sit with her as well, then finishes the burger. He wraps his now freed hand around the edge of the box again but doesn't open any packets. Doesn't start eating. _Isn't this the kid who would beg for breaks – meal, toilet, general – way back when?_ But she knows things have changed. A lot of things. _I can't keep thinking like this._

'Hope,' she begins, then unwraps her chips and puts three in her mouth because she's not entirely sure what to say next. She never has been, especially with no monsters on the horizon or no big governing bodies or Gods to take down. She decides to go with one of the common grounds she's currently aware of. Discard the other world for the time being. Discard what she knows, and doesn't know. 'You're too young to be working in a bar.' And she doesn't mean to sound scolding but she does so anyway.

He laughs again, and this time it's a mix between the two and it makes her shudder in a way that Bhunivelze's pure chuckle doesn't manage. 'I'm immortal,' he says, and the box tumbles from his grip and scatters – as well as the contents _can_ scatter, still wrapped as they are – and he'd holding his hands out in front of him, elbows locked and sleeves riding up, before she can even formulate a feasible response. Something along the lines of the last five hundred years of the new world: how people ceased to grow old or be born, but anything from sickness to ravaging monsters to an angry god could kill them.

There aren't so much ravaging monsters as people who've forgotten how much they should be grateful for, but the sentiment's still there. That, and people age in this new world: they're born, they grow, they age and, sooner or later, they die. There's no immortality there but what Hope means is something else.

And what he's showing her this time is not the palm that grasped their other friends, but the white scars that crawled into his sleeves from his wrists. And more scars wrapped around his wrists as well: newer…or more frequent. They're still dark. Scabbed. Healing. She's surprised they _are_ healing, considering the circumstances she's found him in. She's surprised they're not infected. The most shocking, though, is that they're there to begin with.

Hope's parents hadn't mentioned this. And she'd never imagined it herself.

'Hope…'

He looks at her. Grey eyes, hiding behind contacts: hiding their true colour, and their depth masked with an extra layer of wrapping paper. 'Is it you or Bhunivelze?' he asks. 'Who won't let me die?'

And suddenly, the greasy food she's eaten crawls up her throat and floods her mouth and dribbles down her chin until there's just too much and she coughs and it splatters on her box and lap, and she can't quite work out what it is, exactly, that's toppled her.


	5. Chapter 5

He is guilty, at first, because he knows he's scratched at her until she's bled. He's done it so many times. To his parents – and oh so many times to them. To his friends – or ex-friends now. He's succeeded in scaring them off, and all of them except Alyssa before he even turned fourteen at that. Neither of them are quite sure why she stays so long. Says she feels guilty about something, though she can't recall what. It doesn't matter, ultimately. He drives her away mostly as well. Only when he's fresh out of the hospital will she make an appearance at his house. To check if he's alive. To check if he's "okay".

By the time he turns fifteen, he knows he'll never be "okay." He remembers being torn apart, cell to cell, and remade. And he remembers fading into a white that humans should and could never fade into – and chaos was black, is black, and that's just the final proof that he's no longer human and can't die like them…even though he's been foolish enough to try.

And now it's become a weapon to push even the great Saviour away.

.

She can't explain what makes her crumple inside. Not right then. Not even afterwards, when she manages to shove away the good Samaritans who've brought her to her door and stumble onto her bed and collapse on it. They leave the boxed lunches in the kitchen: Hope's untouched one, and hers half finished. They lock the door behind themselves too, and it's only several hours later that she realises she's let complete strangers into her house, and at a time she's not thinking clearly too.

She panics then, and checks every inch of the place and her keys, and thanking common-sense or lack thereof that she's only got one set of spares and they're with Serah. There's nothing out of place except the food on her counter but she berates herself anyway. She's not a soldier anymore. She knows that. But having fought for over an eternity, she simply can't allow herself to slip up like this – and yet she has.

And, by then, she's fallen asleep and woken with a scream still rammed in her throat and realises why Hope is driving her crazy like this because she'd been hacking away at a god ten times her height and there hadn't been a human soul to dig out of there.

The usual nightmare. More real now with proof floating in and out and she can't convince herself it's just the scars Bhunivelze has left on his unwilling host because it's just too much and Hope's not helping matters. He's not convinced himself. He's still trapped and that much she's sure about, even though she still can't fathom the nature of those binds and she's not the right person to, either. She knows that too, even though she doesn't want to admit it. She doesn't know whether it's selfish either, or recognising her own limitations. She's done both of those things in the past…and failed to recognise her limitations on many occasions as well.

She knows what Serah will say. She needs to talk to someone. But talk to who? The situation with Bhunivelze after the final chime is something that, aside from her, only Hope knows. And Lumina, but Lighting and Lumina are one now: Claire Farron, and that won't change again. Of course Serah will say talk to her – and yet Serah's got her own problems now, marriage problems that no-one but Claire had ever thought she'd have but here she does. And not because they're not in love anymore. They are, and she's seen time and time again how much Snow loves her but it's how long they've been apart, and how long Snow has despaired in that interim. The thing that broke the otherwise unbreakable man and their rebirth into the new world hasn't erased it.

_This new world was supposed to be our paradise_! She throws herself onto the bed again and digs at the quilt. She needs to see the others. Make sure they're okay, at least. But she can't. That'll just make her crumble all the more, won't it? So what's left? Nothing. Absolutely nothing.

And she doesn't seem to be capable of talking to Hope right now.

.

She gets a call that evening from Bartholomew Estheim and she wonders for a fleeting moment how he's even got her landline when she'd used a pay phone to contact him, before remembering he is a well-respected government official even in this new world. It's probably an easy matter to trace her when she hasn't bothered privatising anything. The benefit of going by Lightning for all those years, she'd thought at the time. Very few people know to look for a Claire Farron, even if they're after Lightning or the Saviour.

Bartholomew Estheim is an exception, apparently. Though she's surprised. Surprised because it's an odd thing for Hope to have mentioned to his father in this life, and an odd thing for Bartholomew to have remembered from his previous one, but one of those others has happened and he's found her.

And once he's introduced himself, she knows what for.

'…did you find Hope?'

She swallows, her mouth suddenly dry. 'I did,' she admits. 'I lost him again.'

'I see.' There is a pause both before and after those words. 'I wish…' Then he sighs. 'So many chances, and still I don't know what's happened after I died to…' He trails off again, fishing for a word that doesn't exist or he wants to deny.

'I know.' Her lips move before she can quite stop herself. Perhaps it's the want to understand, or her own weakness. 'Some of it, at least.'

'You…do?' He sounds both hopeful and afraid. 'I want to help him. I want to save him. I just don't – don't know how.' The words are faster now, faster and almost tumbling over each other but still clear and ringing in his ears. Ringing with a raw honesty and why wouldn't they? He was his father. The man who was more than willing to die for harbouring l'Cie because his son had become one. The man who was more than willing to forgive the man who'd gotten his wife killed (without even knowing the bit where it had been her choice to pick up that gun and fight, or to shield Snow from the blast). The man who'd been so caught up in work that his son had felt neglected, that he'd missed the vacation that turned into a nightmare and cost him his wife but gave him back his son. But that's in the old world and Nora is still alive. There is no Pulse vestige in Bodhum anymore. There isn't even a Bodhum, or a Fal'Cie.

'Nora remembers nothing,' Bartholomew continues, when the silence stretches too long. 'And I don't know what Hope recalls. Not fully. His mother's death. Killing people. Bhunivelze.' She breaths sharply. 'Something about his heart having been cut out?'

'His soul,' she corrects, but they're sort of the same thing, aren't they? 'Bhunivelze's servants have no need for emotions…or chaos.'

'Chaos?' He repeats the word like it's a foreign thing. It is to him who dies long before such things came to light.

'It's a long tale,' she warns, 'and most of it is irrelevant.' And yet why has she told him this much? _Need to talk, indeed._ But this hadn't been what she'd had in mind.

'The story of the world is made up of many individual tales,' Bartholomew muses. 'I don't think it'll be as irrelevant as you say. If you could…' He trails off again. 'Perhaps face to face?'

'Now?' she wonders. It is late, yes, but in the near future she needs to find Hope again. _Find and do what?_

'Tomorrow?' he asks. 'Or whatever day is convenient for you. Do you have transport?'

'Yes,' she replies, before she remembers her transport is the train or, in particular emergencies, Snow and his motorcycle. Perhaps it's because her mind is occupied with other matters. In any case, claiming she has the means hands the reins over to her. Free to dawdle, or delay, or never show up at all and won't that be a cowardly door to take?

And isn't this running away, as it is? Not looking for Hope again? _I should. I really should. And not throw up this time_ and she can barely believe she did so the first time. 'I should look for –'

'Chances are he's moved to another area.' He sighs again, a parent's weight of worry on his shoulders. 'I honestly don't know whether it's better to just give him his space at times like this, but… He slips away the harder we look, and then just…comes back.'

Her breath hitches. _Comes back? On his own?_ She recalls the way he'd followed her to the street vendor, to the park. _Just like that?_ Then she laughs to herself, quite forgetting she's still on the phone. 'I'm even more confused now.'

Bartholomew is silent for a moment. 'Come over,' he says, finally. 'We'll tell you the whole story. Or what we know of it. And I hope you can extend the same favour –'

'Of course.' For selfish reasons or not. Whether she's trying to save Hope or herself.

.

She lies awake in bed, trying to count floaters in the darkness but failing. It's purely definitional, she knows. Floaters disappear when you look at them, and hover at the edge of vision when you don't. Like the answers to many things. Like the truth that would solidify her nightmares or banish them. Like the truth that could do the same to Hope _but he's given up on the truth. Hasn't he?_

She closes her eyes. The floaters are still there. She stares. They vanish and she opens her eyes again. It's surprising, sometimes, how hard it is to keep her eyes closed when she doesn't want to fall asleep. She's already slept. Already had a nightmare this day. But now she's dug a hole for herself and she wonders what she's doing, and why. Whether she's using Hope's parents as therapy or she's really going to find the answers, and is she even looking for them? And does she have the ones they want? She's got the Bhunivelze part covered – kind of. Better than anyone but Hope himself. But the stuff in between. _There was Valhalla. Then crystal stasis._ But everyone had gone their separate ways – except Sazh had been with Dajh, and Noel and Mog with Serah. But Hope… No-one had been with Hope by the end. No-one knew.

She feels like she's forgetting something, but she can't quite put her finger on what. Just like the floaters, slipping away before she can get a good look at them.


	6. Chapter 6

She remembers in the late hours of the morning, after she's wasted her night off staring at black and fallen asleep in the false dawn. But Snow's name is blearing in her head and she calls his number before she can chicken out – because she just doesn't ask Snow for help for things that don't relate to Serah: Snow offers or she does without. But that hadn't always been true. At one point in their travels, in their tenure as l'Cie, she'd asked for his help with Hope. _And that's what I'm doing now._ Even if it's no longer about being unable to admit to needing something from an oaf like him.

_Oaf is more affectionate nowadays than anything. Just like "Sis" is no longer a teasing tone._

'Hey Sis,' he answers, along with a roar of wind. Driving out in the countryside again, she muses. A far stretch from Yusnan, but that's what calls him there.

'I need a ride,' she says abruptly. 'And some information.'

'Now?' He's surprised. Abruptness is a second nature to her but the demand for something is not and they both know it.

'Soon,' she amends. 'I guess you'll want breakfast.' She knows from Serah that Snow tends to drive around for a bit before coming home for a late bite, rather than eating with Serah before she rushes off to school before eight.

'An hour?' he volunteers. 'But where to?'

She gives him the address. 'We might be there for a few hours,' she adds. 'And yes, you too.'

He doesn't ask why. He'll ask eventually. Once, he'd have asked straight away and she's starting to miss his spontaneity, now that he's mellowed out a bit – or a lot.

.

'Estheim?' Snow repeats, over the roar of the engine and the wind. 'Has something happened with the kid?'

That's another thing Claire finds herself missing: the humour Snow would throw anywhere and everywhere and often inappropriately. The question is too matter of fact now. Too raw. But she can't blame him for it at all. He did have to sit and watch while everyone he cared about slipped away.

And he's the only person Hope slipped away from, instead of the other way around. Though the opposite is also true. Hero wanders into a time portal and disappears for four hundred years, only to pop back into existence with omens of an impending assassination. But he was still the old Snow back then. She saw it from Valhalla. Many times, with the warning coming at many times: too early, too late, just on time…

'Short story is Hope is…' What was the short version? '…in a bad way, and his parents want to know what happened in the past so they can understand what's going on now.'

The motorcycle skids a bit before Snow straightens it out. 'In a bad way how?' he exclaims, before coughing and looking straight ahead, eyes burning into the stretched out road.

She's shocked him, and she wonders why, whether it's her lack of people skills again or something deeper she's skimmed over or simply not recognised. 'I saw him a few days ago,' she begins, 'but didn't recognise him. He'd switched his hair and eye colours: dye and contacts. Saw him again in the bar I work at, wiping down the tables. One night, one of his contacts fell out, and…'

'Hope has pretty memorable eyes,' Snow finishes for her, voice weighed down. 'No mistaking them.'

'Yep.' She sighs as well, a sigh that's swallowed by the wind. Except it is possible to mistake them. With Bhunivelze's eyes, equally green. 'I cornered him in the bathroom, but he – manages to slip away.' She doesn't say why. Not yet. Maybe not ever.

He doesn't ask; as unusual as it is for someone to slip past her, Hope had always stood the best chance.

'I looked around for him after work,' she continued, after a moment to collect the strands of her tale. 'Couldn't find him. Called his parents. Found out they haven't seen him for weeks.'

Snow's head whips around again, before snapping back to the road. 'He ran away from home?!'

'Not exactly,' she admits. 'It's a bit more complicated. Bartholomew said this has happened before. Several times. And he winds up coming back after a month or so. And…a few other things.' There's too much. The Estheims can explain better than her. 'Seems like all that time with Bhunivelze's messed with him.'

She's forgotten Snow doesn't know the tale, that no-one does, except Claire and Hope and Bhunivelze, and all the others know is that Hope disappeared a hundred and sixty-nine years before the end of the world, only to appear as a conduit on the Ark for the Saviour in the last thirteen days.

But Snow doesn't ask this time, and the rest of the drive is silent.

.

Claire realises after Snow's parked his motorcycle that she hasn't given Bartholomew a time to expect them, but he opens for the door when they knock and isn't too surprised to see the extra person. 'Snow, was it?' he checks.

Snow nods, and the father invites them both inside. 'Nora!' he calls. And Nora comes hurrying out and Claire almost crashes into Snow because he's frozen in the foyer, staring at her. Remembering her death in the old world, no doubt. He's killed a bunch of monsters and PSICOM soldiers since, but the innocent are always, and especially to heroes, more memorable.

But he collects himself at their concerned looks and they sit on the couches in the living room together.

And then silence, because none of them really know where to start.

Bartholomew does, eventually. 'This is Lightning – I mean, Claire Farron, and Snow Villiers,' he explains to his wife. 'They were very good friends of Hope's in the old world. Almost like his parents.' And there's a fond little smile at the end of that statement that catches them both off guard. Them, parents? And Snow is Serah's wife to boot.

'I think I'm just the annoying uncle,' Snow coughs, after a moment.

'Nonsense,' says Bartholomew crisply. 'It takes a man of great courage and character to do what you did for us.'

And he doesn't know the half of it, Claire thinks. Doesn't know how she'd given Hope her survival knife and encouraged him on his vendetta for revenge. Doesn't know how close Hope was with following through with it. Doesn't know exactly how Snow got hurt that badly. Why Hope had been in a situation that sent him flying off the bridge from an explosion to begin with.

Nora is nodding and offering small smiles to the both of them. 'I don't remember.' Claire knows this. Snow doesn't. 'But I'm grateful nonetheless, for what you've done for my husband and son in the other world, and for coming all the way here today as well. And… and for taking the time to call us and let us know our son is safe…'

_Safe?_ Claire wonders. An underage child in a bar is not safe at all, in her opinion.

'We should start from the beginning,' says Bartholomew, and then stops. _Where is the beginning?_ 'Well, neither Hope nor I remembered the other world initially. We both remembered bits soon after he turned fourteen, and I've remembered a bit more since then. Mostly about Rygdea and the cavalry, and making plans to build a government-free research institute.'

'The Academy,' says Snow. 'It eventually becomes Academia, the capital city and foundation of Gran Pulse. And Hope becomes the Director after you retire in 10AF.' No-one speaks, and so he continues. 'He's researching paradoxes mostly – do you remember anything about paradoxes?' Bartholomew shakes his head. Snow gestures at Claire, who sighs.

'We defeated Orphan, freeing the people of Cocoon from the rule of the Fal'Cie,' she begins, mostly for Nora's benefit. 'Fang and Vanille become the crystal piller that stops Cocoon from crashing down onto Gran Pulse and destroying every living thing. Soon after that though, I'm swept into chaos and forgotten. The world thinks I was in that pillar too.'

'Our memories changed,' Snow clarifies. 'Only Serah – my wife and Sis's sister – remembered that she'd been on the plains of Gran Pulse with us after Orphan's defeat.'

'This is a paradox,' Claire finishes. 'The most difficult of them. Others pop up, some after others have been solved, and the true timeline was buried in them. I was outside time, by that point. In a place called Valhalla, or the Unseen Realm. And I was fighting the man responsible for these paradoxes: a man called Caius. Busy with him, I needed someone else to correct the paradoxes. The only other person who could see them. The only person I thought I could trust. Serah. So I send her with Noel, the last human alive – from 700AF, who's somehow stumbled into Valhala – to gates through time to fix them.'

'I've already set off,' Snow continues. 'Serah was the only one who remembered Sis but I trusted my…fiancé, at the time. I went searching for her. Stumbled into a few time gates, got my l'Cie powers back, tried to prevent the crystal pillar from collapsing – ' The Estheims start, and Snow realises that needs explanation too.

'The crystal pillar.' Claire sighs again. _Why am I doing the hard work?_ 'It's prophesised to collapse in 500AF, in the original time and even with most of the distortions. A few speed up the process, but those are the first ones straightened out. There are various reasons, some due to the paradox, and others not. It was impossible to stop Cocoon falling anyway. I don't know what happens then though. I was…in crystal stasis again.'

'Cocoon falls,' says Snow. 'But Hope and the Academy manage to make a whole new Cocoon and shoot it into the sky – without the Fal'Cie!'

'Amazing,' Bartholomew breaths. 'That would have been considered impossible, back then.'

'Was impossible,' Snow grins. 'Wouldn't have been possible without time travelling. What happens with that is that Hope becomes the Director in 10AF while continuing research into the paradox and adding on the disappearance of all his friends – Sis, then me, then Sazh and Dajh, then Serah… you get the idea.' He throws up his arms. 'We've all stumbled into time gates and wound up elsewhere, but the kid's still in his time and wondering what the hells is going on. Then Serah and Noel stumble into him at some ruins in 10AF. Twice, actually, because the first time was a paradox that they resolve.'

'But Hope does travel in time, in the end?' Nora asks. 'To be in 500AF…'

'He does that himself,' says Claire with a bit of a snort. 'Builds a time capsule or something. Completely scientific while the rest of us are tossed around with magic mumbo jumbo.'

'Amazing,' says Bartholomew again, and they realise how far they've wandered off track.


	7. Chapter 7

'Back to 10AF.' Snow clears his throat. 'Hope meets up with Sera and Noel, and they've got something that…shows the future, simply put. There are a few prophecies there. One shoes Sis here alive in the future –'

'In Valhalla,' Claire corrects, 'a world that doesn't know past, present or future.'

'Valhalla,' Snow assents. 'And another shows the crystal pillar supporting Cocoon crumbling. So Hope resolves to find a way to stop that, or at least save all the people, while Noel and Serah resolve the paradoxes and hope the pillar dissolving is also part of that – or can be stopped by Hope and his work if it isn't.'

'So Hope leaves behind everything to jump into the future to make sure Cocoon doesn't crash down on Gran Pulse?' Bartholomew concludes.

'Everything isn't much,' Snow corrects. 'You were the only link to his past left, and I think you die some time between 10 and 13AF. And his bitch of an assistant – ' The Estheims gape at him. 'But she goes with him anyway.'

'Uhh…' Nora manages, after a bit.

Claire nudges snow. _You let this cat out of the bag._ 'Alyssa,' he explains. 'Another paradox. She was supposed to have died in the Purge, but somehow the paradoxes involve her surviving. And Caius plays on that, convincing her…well, it depends on the paradox, really, but in most of them, she's the reason Hope winds up dead. In the true future, he isn't.'

'Alyssa,' Nora repeats faintly, and even Bartholomew is white. 'Alyssa Zaidelle?'

'Think so. She did have a funny surname like that.' But he doesn't sound too sure. The Estheims exchange looks regardless. It seems they know her. Or of her.

'Then this is why she's apologised so many times to Hope,' says Bartholomew. 'And why she still comes. Still asks about him. She feels guilty.'

_Or she's up to her old tricks again,_ thinks Claire, though she feels a touch guilty afterwards. Alyssa is like Lumina, except more unfortunate. Never had a chance to stay alive at the end of the story.

Snow ploughs on. 'By then, they've worked out that something called the thirteenth Ark will appear around 400AF, and they'll be able to work out how to relevitate Cocoon by studying it. So they build a time capsule, leave the basis for building the new shell of Cocoon with the new Director, and fast forward into 400AF. Then more research mumbo-jumbo – ' Bartholomew coughs. ' – and Serah and Noel pick up some stuff from different time periods, and they've got everything they need to make a viable new Cocoon and send it into the sky. Cue flash-forward again into 500AF because Hope wants to make damn sure that Cocoon will get to the sky safe, and fair enough because it doesn't in a few paradoxes and Caius doesn't make it easy for us this time either. I dunno exactly what happens after that. Hope said something about Noel saying – ' He stops, brows furrowing as he puzzles through his own statement, before continuing. ' – no, that's right. Noel says that he killed Etro somehow. The goddess in charge of the cycle of life and death. Had something to do with Caius and a black heart?'

'The heart of chaos,' Claire corrects. 'A manifestation of Etro. It's what made Caius immortal – and drove him to do what he was doing. Eliminating history so the seeress would be free from her cursed fate.' She scowls as she speaks this, but continues anyway. 'Caius is immortal because he is the guardian of the seeress – or multiple. None make it past fifteen because their visions chip away at their life. He's seen countless die, and so he wants to save them – and the only way he can is by obliterating history.'

'Obliterating history,' Bartholomew repeats. 'The origin of the paradoxes then. His slow stepping stones. But how can history be erased? New memories will just –'

'It's chaos,' Claire interrupts. 'Valhalla, the unseen realm, is aflood with it. And the souls of the living all have chaos in them as well. Caius planned for the mass death caused by Cocoon's collapse – that was avoided thanks to Hope and his new Cocoon, and Noel and Serah for dealing with Caius – ' She swallows the "although". ' – to flood Valhalla and make the entire world the same: no past, no present, no future. Killing Caius stops the mass death, but chaos is still unleashed because what held Valhalla in a rift outside time was Etro, and killing him has also destroyed Etro's heart that beats in him.'

'It sounds unavoidable,' Nora ventures, after the silence sits on them again.

'Perhaps.' She is curter than she needs to be, but no-one calls her out on it. 'In any case, Serah sees a vision of the future and dies at that point, and I enter crystal stasis to preserve her memory until the end of the world, without even a thought as to who I was leaving behind.'

Snow picks up the story from there, before they can consider her final admission. 'The chaos floods the world. People stop ageing, and being born. People stop dying of natural causes too, but they can still die in other ways. Infections, diseases, getting killed by monsters… you get the idea.' They nod. 'We – that's me, Sazh, Noel and Hope – we decide we're going to get to the bottom of this. Load of bull that turns out to be.'

They stare, and Nora jumps a little as Snow slams his palms onto his lap. 'Hope's the only one who actually does anything,' he continues. 'He's still the Director after all, and he's got a lot of influence. Keeps everyone hopeful. Tells him they'll find a way to solve things and hang on to faith until then and people do it. They listen to him. Sets me up in charge of some things when the Fal'Cie are poking their noses everywhere. Tries to help everyone who needs it. But it cuts away at him, telling the world there's hope when he can't see it himself, you know?' He shakes his head. 'Only we knew, because we just know him that well, of everyone. But even we didn't expect him to just…vanish one day. The last anyone hears of him is a message he sends to me. "Lightning will return as the Saviour. Beware the fake Lightning." Hell if I knew what that meant at the time, but it was a bit of hope, I guess.'

'Hope that almost got be plummeted into oblivion by this oaf,' Claire scoffs, but it's hardly a laughing matter and they all know that. 'I can take it from here. Thirteen days before the end of the world, I awake – on the man-made Ark Hope designed, with Hope a fourteen year old boy instead of the twenty-seven year old man he should have been.'

'But – ' Bartholemew splutters. 'How –'

'Bhunivelze,' she says. 'I don't know how, but he wanted Hope as his eyes and ears, to watch over everything I did as Saviour. Another hostage over my head too, after a fashion.'

Nora winces at the thought of her son as a hostage.

'He instructs me from the Ark.' Claire ignores the reaction – reactions. She has to. She has to get to the end of the tale. The end where all the answers lie in wait for her. 'Says Bhunivelze has chosen me as the Savoir – the fisher of souls who'll save who I can and guide them to the new world, buy helping them solve the problems they've left behind. And I do. Some are harder than others. Snow is especially difficult, and now I know why.' She half glares.

'I was warned, Sis,' he shrugs. 'But you didn't mention Hope in the ark, either.'

'Hope's orders.' She frowns. 'Bhunivelze's, rather. Just before the start of the last day, I see the real Hope, and he explains how the Hope in the Ark is just a conduit for Bhunivelze: a body and soul remoulded for Bhunivelze's purposes, and yet it's still him, at the end of things.'

'Sis proves herself,' tries Snow, when Claire doesn't press on. 'Last day, we launch a tiny little coup de tat against Bhunivelze. Might've pissed him off too, because next thing we know, we're all crushed and in the chaos. Dead.'

'Everyone but me,' Claire corrects. 'He wants his precious Saviour in tact, for another task. To take Etro's place – and I was more than willing to do it, then. But not before I knocked a certain God off his throne. For dangling Serah in my face like a carrot – offering to bring her back when he doesn't have that power. And what he did to Hope. And taking the others: Fang and Vanille and Snow – just like that. I'd already turned my back on him and his principles. The only thing left to do was to destroy him.'

'But it wasn't that simple. He'd taken Hope's body – and now he'd shoved the soul out somehow and was occupying it himself. Explaining his grand little plan for the world.' Her lips twist, and her gut as well but she fights that down. 'How the chaos and, by extension, human souls are invisible to him, and so he wants his new and perfect world to have souls he _can_ understand. Something about inhabiting everyone's bodies?' She shakes her head. 'I was more concerned with what he'd done to everyone at that point. He also decides to ditch this world because it's impure – because the chaos still lives, thanks to us interfering with the Soulsong: our little God-defying act on the last day. Then he decides to show us how worthless humans are by – ' She chokes on this part. _Damn it._ ' – by breaking his body like it's – a biscuit or something.'

Bartholomew jerks in his seat. Nora closes her eyes and shakes. Even Snow is shuddering, agape. 'That bastard!'

'It took a while to beat him.' She's skipped a bit. She knows it. She can't go back to it, though. Not right now. 'First time, I used my Saviour magic. Rescued Hope's soul and sent him to you two. Realise he hasn't gone when he saves me a little later down the track. And then everyone shows up again, breaking out of the chaos and all ready to help destroy Bhunivelze, and we do it and he falls into the Unseen Realm, and we're born again here – as far as we know.' She closes her eyes. 'But Hope…'

Silence. Snow leans forward, the couch creaking under him. 'What _is_ going on with the kid?' he asks. 'I've got a very brief story at the moment.'

The Estheims look at each other. 'Our turn,' says Bartholomew, swallowing, 'to tell our side of the tale.'


	8. Chapter 8

'I guess,' Bartholomew begins, after a false start, 'it began as soon as Hope was born. He was fussy like all babies, but…strange.'

'As in he'd have moods,' Nora explains, 'happy one moment, sad the next. Normal I suppose for young children, but it continued – still continues. And now it's more than the difference between screaming and crying, and happy gurgles.'

'We didn't think much of it at first,' Bartholomew admits. 'We were first time parents – as far as we remembered – and children are different to adults. But sometimes he frightened us. The way he laughed. The way he was terrified of nothing at all. And when he started talking, he babbled about souls and chaos and being saved – or not being saved, or both.'

Claire's expression tightens. _From then._ Snow frowns. The problem is starting to come together, but he stares at Claire anyway. Stares because he wonders how they've wound up here, here where they're necessary in putting this puzzling puzzle together.

'And when he's…about two years old, we set up play dates and things,' Nora continues, 'to get him used to other kids before he starts school. Except he used to hide in a corner and watch them silently…and then cry when they weren't there. We just didn't know what to do, and we worried about what would happen when he started school. But school seemed okay.'

'We did get comments from the teachers,' Bartholomew adds. 'How he doesn't participate in group activities. How he's so quiet. But there's no wild laughing or wild crying. Maybe because he was busy learning? Enjoying it? We have no idea. But then he got older, and classes became more…sedentary, I guess. And kids became crueller.'

'Bullies,' says Snow, and his lips curl into a fairly good imitation of Claire's own sneers. 'Like growing up isn't hard enough.'

Bartholomew shrugs. 'We fear the different, and the unknown, I suppose. In any case, Hope starts to stay late after school. Not really participating in sports or clubs, but watching them. We set ground rules. Make sure we know when he plans to stay back, so we can pick him up. At some point it becomes every day and we debate on putting our foot down, but…we allow it. As for friends, he hasn't really made any in this world. Sometimes people try. They give up after awhile. Except…except Alyssa. But she's less of a friend and more of a worried classmate. She brings the homework he misses, and things like that. Like she feels guilty.'

'Maybe it's her way of atoning for something she couldn't control,' says Nora. 'In any case, we're grateful for her. She hasn't seen Hope himself for a couple of years now, but she still brings his homework for him, every week. And small snacks and things too.'

Snow mutters something. They allow it. Noel probably feels the same way about her.

'And, sometimes,' Bartholomew closes his eyes, 'when he's alone, or just with us, he acts…different.'

Clare stiffens. Snow just blinks. 'How do you mean?' he asks.

'It depends,' Bartholomew hedges. Nora grasps his hand, intertwining their fingers, and their warmth. 'Sometimes, he's scratching at himself. Drawing blood. When he got a bit older – entered high school – he started using other objects too. Rulers. Pens. A kitchen knife a couple of times. We put a lock on the door.'

Snow bites his lip. Draws blood. Claire wonders how she didn't see this tale in those scars. Do they heal better? Are they hidden better? What else can't she see? What else can he – Hope – take?

'Other times, he's…' He falters again. Nora's knuckles are white in his grip and so are his. 'So distant, like he's someone else. Talks to use, talks to others – but it's like he's talking about somebody else. Like those things mean nothing to him. Even…Nora's death. When he remembered. Some time after his fourteenth birthday.'

That surprises them both. Even the twenty-seven year old Academy Director hadn't been able to keep the emotion out of his voice when he spoke about his mother. And both of them, better than anyone, had seen the depth of the grief he'd held for her.

And, to Claire especially, it's frightening. It's the Hope in the Ark. Not the boy they'd travelled with as l'Cie. Not the man who became the future of humanity – a burden that always had been too much for one person, and yet he'd shouldered it without complaint and for as long as he could.

'We took him to doctors.' Nora picks up the explanation. 'They diagnosed him with a few things. They kept changing their minds.' She shakes her head. 'Something about the guidelines being…inexact. Anxiety and depression. Schizophrenia and bipolar. They said psychiatric…problems overlap, their boundaries all muddled up and they can't place a name on it because they can't really understand.'

_Of course_ , Claire thinks. _The doctors know nothing of the past to be able to understand._

'They put him on medications. Different sorts. Some work for a bit. Others don't work at all. Most of the time, he's either too quiet or too…not. So many times he's thrown the pills away and we can't force him because they're not helping. They're just tipping the see-saw – ' She cuts herself off, swallowing dryly.

'And then he turned fourteen,' says Bartholomew, after a floundering pause. 'Turned fourteen and remembered – some things. I'm not sure how much. Nora's death. Bhunivelze. The Saviour. Somebody failing.'

'Me,' Claire admits, after another pause. 'He means I failed to save him. He's said as much when I saw him.'

Nora's free hand reaches over the coffee table between them, and Claire accepts it. 'You have saved him,' she says, softly. 'I don't recall any of this but still, I know it's the truth. And you have saved our son. Many times. More than we, his parents, can ever hope to repay.' Her tone is earnest. Slightly louder when their volumes have fallen over the course of the puzzle they piece together. And her hand, though shaking, is warm.

'Thank you.' But she can't really accept that, and she lets go after a bit. 'But I spent thirteen days with the Hope in the Ark and not even realising there was something wrong.' _And worse, I didn't trust him – no matter the Hope on the final day said it was the right thing I did._

'You also woke up thirteen days before the end of the world,' Snow points out, 'and we – Noel and me especially – don't exactly make your job easy. Easy enough to get distracted.'

'I shouldn't have been,' she counters, fingers curling into fists. 'I saw Hope every day, after all. Talked to him. Thought about all the odd things he said, and how he never even _tried_ to leave the Ark – just said he couldn't. And why? I never bothered asking.' The words tumble out of her. Words she's never said aloud, barely allowed herself to even think. 'And the second last day, he asks me what's going to happen to _his_ soul when Vanille does the Soulsong and I don't have the brains to figure out what he even means.'

Snow's reached over and grabbed her wrists before she can hit her temples. She glares at him. He grimaces. 'That glare of yours has lost its touch, Sis.'

'I blame Lumina,' she mumbles.

'Huh?'

'Not relevant.' But nobody knows the truth about Lumina, except for her. Serah might have worked it out, if she'd borne witness to the times. But she hadn't, and it was Serah's absence that had bred much of that despair or is that just another excuse of hers, and even Serah couldn't have stopped Etro's champion from crossing into Bhunivelze's hands instead.

Then again, maybe Lumina _is_ relevant. 'Lumina was a child who appeared a little before the end of the world,' she explains, turning away from Snow. 'Generally up to mischief, though she does do a few good and bad things as well. Helps Sazh out. Also betrays Fang and gives Vanille everything she needs to complete the Soulsong.'

'Works out in the end,' Snow reminds her. 'We destroy the box and Vanille sends the dead here.'

'Of course.' She closes her eyes. 'No-one understood, at first. Children couldn't be born since Chaos infected the world, and Lumina wasn't there before. I thought, sometimes, she was Serah – Serah's spirit. But she wasn't. She was me: the weak and childish part of myself I'd cut away of my own free will, to become strong so I could protect Serah. The part of myself I refused to acknowledge – and I would be in the Unseen Realm as the new goddess of death if I hadn't, in that final moment. And if Hope hadn't turned his back on the chance to reunite with you two and come back for me.' She twists herself out of Snow's grip. 'Stupid kid.'

'That's my line,' says Snow, and his lips twitch, but don't form a smile. 'But there's also no guarantee we'd have defeated Bhunivelze if he hadn't done that. And he came back anyway.'

She shrugs. 'Did he really?' she wonders. 'He can't decide whether he's Bhunivelze or his puppet, and…I really don't know either,' she confesses.

Her eyes are still dry. Maybe it's not Lumina who'd taken that ability to cry from her.


	9. Chapter 9

'What else can you tell us?' Snow asks.

They're ignoring Claire's last admission. Maybe they can't accept it. Maybe they just don't understand it. After all, she's the only one who's met Bhunivelze face to face – except maybe Hope. But his "meetings" might not count as all, if the God was just a shadowy voice in his head and heart.

Nora and Bartholomew exchange a quick glance, and then look away at each other. 'There's also,' Nora begins, before swallowing and beginning again. 'We admitted him a few times. When we couldn't patch him up – or when he really frightened us and we just couldn't take it any more – ' She's shaking, and inching closer to her husband: to his tall statue and infinite warmth. 'We always feel so _guilty_ afterwards – ' She chokes. 'But – we just can't –'

'Hospital,' Bartholomew interrupts, carefully schooling his own tone but Claire can hear the tremor underneath and wonders if Snow can too. 'They've transferred him to the psychiatric hospital a few times too. Tried all sorts of treatments. Didn't try a few others.'

'We put our feet down.' Nora laughs suddenly. 'Maybe not soon enough, because – we were desperate. Said no to cutting into his brain – ' Snow gasps here, but Claire is not surprised. She's heard of the barbaric ways they treat things – and, sometimes, how necessary it is. But that's when the skull's imploding with blood and you need to drill a hole to get it out, or there's a tumour you need to chop out with a bit of good tissue. Organic things. Things that can be removed, or fixed, or fought. She's no doctor, but this…this doesn't sound organic. And she's heard plenty of horror stories about how people have been torn apart by such "treatments" too. ' – but we allowed the electrical shocks – for a bit.'

Snow's breath is suddenly and unbearably loud in Claire's ear. 'Shock?' he repeats, faintly. 'Why would you –'

'Electrical shocks can reset the brain, so to speak,' Bartholomew explains. 'The brain's made up of lots of little circuits. It's like restarting a computer that's not working, or jumpstarting a car. And the heart's the same – in a general sense, of course. That's why we thought – ' He shakes his head. 'Look at how far we've been willing to go.'

'And then – ' Nora is crying now, but she doesn't lift a hand to brush away her tears. 'He's just gone one day.'

'He's about fourteen and a half,' Bartholomew explains. 'No note, no warning. He's just gone and we panic. We call the police, and everyone who might've seen him. Catch his tail-coats a few time but he bolts, and then he shows up again a few weeks later looking like – ' He gulps. ' – like a zombie.'

Claire wonders at the description. _Zombie?_ Was there something hidden in there? Something the parents didn't want to tell the two of them? Or one of them in particular? They've been talking openly – even frankly – so far, but all families have skeletons they don't want even their closest friends to know. What they've spoken…for the Estheims, is out of both worry and desperation. And for her – maybe she's desperate as well. _I'm sorry, Snow, for dragging you out here and into this_.

'And this has happened a few times again, since,' Bartholomew finishes. 'Miss Lightning – '

'Claire,' she interrupts.

' – Claire,' he corrects himself, 'spotted Hope about a week ago and called us, and that's how we're here today.' He pauses. 'It occurred to me,' he admits, after a breath, 'that I could try and contact you – the two of you, and Miss Fang, and Mr Sazh – but I knew none of your full names and neither did Rygdea. He's security in the government building I work at,' he explains.

'Small world,' Claire mutters to herself. She wonders if things would have been different if they'd introduced themselves properly all those years ago. _But would it have even mattered?_ She's got far too many regrets as it is.

Snow shifts beside her. 'I see now,' he says, a somewhat distant tone in his voice. Distant in that his thoughts are elsewhere, drowning amongst other thoughts like the rest of them. 'Why you called, Sis.'

It's a decidedly unhelpful statement. Summarising things, and nothing else. But pure Snow.

'You know things I didn't,' she says flatly. Maybe it had irked her a little as well, but it was also the truth.

And the silence that descended upon them now was the longest yet.

.

'It's almost lunch time.' Nora stands. Tears have frozen on her face, but she seems to have forgotten them, though her voice is still high. 'Will the two of you be staying?'

'Please,' says Snow, before Claire can respond – and rightly so, she realises. His hands are trembling slightly still, and it's he who'll be driving them back. He needs the time: is in command of the reins and it's selfish of her to demand otherwise.

Nora leaves the room. None of the three remaining follow or volunteer their help. None of them can cook. They simply sit, none of them in the mood for small talk and all of them occupied by other thoughts.

Claire goes through what the Estheims have told her again. Is there anything that speaks of Hope, or Bhunivelze? That laughing – yes, that laugh from the bar, from her nightmares, from the void beyond before the God decided to discard his human vessel and crush him like a poorly made clay vase. The emotionlessness – but can she blame Bhunivelze for that or was it Hope, protecting himself from the parasite that had taken up residence in his body? She'd never asked. Never even thought to wonder why Hope had become this way, like her when she'd had reasons – and she'd forgotten her own reasons too. _And, to think, I'd wanted to_ stop _that very thing, over a thousand years ago._

Then what about Hope? She searches, but where is the Hope that had been scared of every moving shadow but had a strong heart deep down? Where was the child who'd matured, who'd become the voice of reason, the voice of hope? Where was the child who'd vowed to not be a burden, to protect and allow himself to be protected? And where was the boy who'd grown into the man who became humanity's hope and the one who had truly spared them from humanity's destruction?

The tears, the feelings of guilt. That's Hope to a "t", she thinks. The part of him that flees might be as well, and the part of him who comes back but it's all too vague. _Do you think you're burdening your parents? Is that why you run? Or are you afraid you're hurting them?_ All feasible reasons. All feasible _Hope_ reasons, anyway. If Bhunivelze was trying to tear this family apart – or just plain tearing Hope apart – then he was doing a pretty good job with it. Maybe not so much between the parents, but between parent and child. Or not. Who knew what Hope thought of his parents this time round, but with Bartholomew's red eyes and twisting hands and pots trembling in the kitchen with Nora's unsteady handling, Claire had no doubt the couple did not blame their son for his behaviour one bit. She might have thought it naïve of them, but it wasn't. Especially not for Bartholomew who remembered his son from the old world and who he'd grown up to be. And maybe there was a parental instinct at play as well. The one she's never had.

'Miss – Claire,' says Bartholomew suddenly, and Claire looks at her. 'Did – did Hope say anything to you? The second time you two met?'

'I – ' She remembers those last words all too well, even if what happened after that is unclear. There's bile in her throat again but no so much. Bearable, though she grimaces as she swallows it down to no avail. _Roll back_ , she scolds herself. 'I found him in a church,' she explains. Churches aren't exactly a nice topic, but still it's better, far better. 'He was listening to a sermon, so I stayed and watched the tail end too.' She notices Snow grimace out of the corner of his eyes. He hates places of worship for the same reasons she does. But, unlike her, he's developed a reluctance for bars and similar entertainment places after Yusnan too. 'Asked him to have lunch with me. He followed without a fuss and I got a couple of boxes from a street vendor and went to the park.'

'He did?' There's a faint smile on Bartholomew's face, she's surprised to see. 'He remembers and trusts you,' he explains further. 'He only follows us or large crowds otherwise.'

She remembers Hope following her for very different reasons, initially. But all three of them are aware of that. And there's still the initial question. The question she's let slip behind. 'Hope didn't touch his food,' she continues. 'Stared at it, but didn't eat a thing. And then he – ' She chokes again, and this time it's noticeable because both men's heads snap up in concern and she waves them off and swallows that damn bile down again. _Just spit it out._ 'He asks me who's not letting him die, Bhunivelze…or me.'

'What?' Snow gapes.

Bartholomew blinks, and then leans back and closes his eyes, searching. For the differential Claire's already reached, and he confirms it a moment later when his eyes are open again. 'In the Saviour role, perhaps?

'Probably.' She tries to shrug nonchalantly but doesn't fool either of them. 'I'd never considered that his soul, up in the Ark, would have needed saving to begin with. Not until it was too late, anyway.'

'That's ridiculous,' Snow snaps. 'Not from Hope's point of view, I mean. Not if he doesn't remember that part. But he was with us when we kicked Bhunivelze's butt so you must have saved him at some point. You two were the only two being in the world _alive_ except for him!'

'I thought I had,' she admits quietly. Her eyes burn along with her throat. 'I really thought I had. But then why – why – Is he here, or not? When he laughed at that, when he had his palm out like everyone was going to get sucked into it again, I – '

At times like this, she hates Lumina: the weakness that makes her control crumble into nothing. Snow is a rigid statue beside her and Bartholomew is rising from his seat. What he plans to do, they don't find out, because the doorbell rings and he detours to answer it instead.

And at his cry of 'Hope!', the two of them and Nora in the kitchen rush into the entrance hall.


	10. Chapter 10

Hope looks dead on his feet but otherwise not too different from when she saw him last – barring his expression. But she can't see that, because his father is hugging him, and then his mother – and then Snow, much to her surprise.

Much to Hope's surprise too, because he stares wide-eyed at the man and, unlike with his parents, does not return the hug. Instead, he twists free and bolts back out the open door, and Nora runs onto the sidewalk in her apron and house slippers to try and catch him. 'Hope!' she screams. Claire cranes her neck. Hope isn't even looking at the road as he crosses it and the park beyond.

It's not a very crowded park, nor very large. In fact, it's more an undeveloped slab of land the council or some good Samaritans have changed into a shortcut route. No proper asphalt roads but instead brown winding tracks that the grass hasn't covered. And empty, so they can easily spot the blur of grey getting further and further away.

Snow stands still in shock. Nora stays on the curb and wrings her hands together. _Move!_ Claire screams in her mind. Why isn't anyone moving?

She moves herself. 'Snow,' she says, voice calm. 'Give me your keys.'

He turns slowly. Impatient, she snatches them from his belt and has thrown a leg over his bike before he can protest. 'Don't!' Bartholomew cries.

She doesn't listen. Instead, she turns on the ignition and gives chase.

.

She doesn't know the area. She doesn't need to either. Hope is moving in a straight line and she only needs to approximate his speed and get far enough ahead before turning into one of the roads parallel to his home one and cutting him off.

That's the plan, and it works perfectly. Including the bit where Hope doesn't see her coming until she's got him pinned to somebody's fence.

But she hasn't planned beyond that, and now she's got no idea what to do. Her mind is still a buzz, and the short drive haven't helped her eyes or throat….or mind. 'Hope,' she begins, and then, because she's not sure, she doesn't know, 'Bhunivelze –'

He jerks and almost escapes her hold. Almost, but not quite because her technique is perfect. She's no soldier in this world but that doesn't mean she's forgotten how to be one. Except how to keep her emotions under lock and key, perhaps. And that's all because of Lumina.

On the other hand, she'll have been forever in the Unseen Realm if it wasn't for Lumina…and for Hope.

'I'm sorry – ' But the apology is too late. Far too late. Hope is screaming by now and she thinks she should already know all of Hope's screams by now but she doesn't. It's an unfamiliar sound.

A crowd gathers, and with it murmurs of "that Estheim boy" that tell her this neighbourhood, at least, is well aware of surface circumstances. A few of those murmurs are sympathetic. A few others more scorning. But nobody misinterprets her as an attacker and get in between, at least – and it's all too easy a mistake to make, with how she's holding him.

But she can't let him go. Not before, when he's slipped away from her three times now. And not now when he's thrashing as he is. And the fence is a thin picket line. It won't hold both their weights, or even only Hope's if he continues to thrash like he is.

She wishes he'd say something – and then doesn't. About Bhunivelze, about the Saviour – she doesn't want to hear those things right now, or ever. But she also doesn't want to hear these nonsensical screams. 'Hope.' She says it gently, and firmly. 'Hope. It's me. Lightning. Light. Claire.' Not Saviour. She's not going to say Saviour. She gives him a gentle shake as well, then a harder one. Wishes she'd pinned him the other way around so she can lift his chin like back when they were l'Cie but she can't, and she needs both hands to hold him anyway so the thought is moot.

So are her words, it seems, because he does not respond. The fence does, however. Creaks and leans back a few inches and Claire tries to pull them both away except she can't. Techniques are remembered. Physical strength is another matter. But the crowd see her struggling and two men manage to pull the struggling boy away from the clumsy wall.

She winds up pinning him to the ground until he passes out instead.

.

The Estheims don't bother with a hospital. They simply wave off attempts to help and clean him up and settle him into bed.

'I'm sorry,' Bartholomew says, when he returns downstairs. Nora stays up, ever the guardian angel for her son. 'I should have mentioned. He – doesn't like being restrained.'

'Restrained.' The word leaves a bad taste in Claire's mouth. But Hope… 'He can't possibly –'

'Can we be more frank?' asks Snow tiredly. 'I feel like the both of you are skipping important bits of information, on purpose or otherwise.'

It's a surprisingly astute observation from him – and unfortunately true. 'Our entire live stories aren't relevant,' Claire sighs, though that's not it either and they both know it.

Bartholomew, at least, is more forward. 'I'm sorry,' he says. 'This we just plain forgot to mention, but sometimes – it's hard.' He closes his eyes. 'He panics when he's restrained. Someone holding him with both hands. Pinning him. Or even he's wrapped himself in his blankets too tightly. Of course, they tend to restrain him at the hospital and that just makes things worse…'

'Chicken and egg,' sighs Claire. She forgets where she's picked the phrase up from, but it's a fitting one for situations like this. 'Anyway, the only things with restraints and Hope I can think off is when Bhunivelze decided to give up using Hope's soulless body as a puppet and broke it like a doll.'

Snow's hands shook again. 'How – why – '

'It was Bhunivelze's way. Hope told me himself, on the last day. That Bhunivelze was going to throw him aside and let him melt into nothing.' She closes her eyes. 'That would have been kinder than the truth.'

Silence again. Too much of it, this day. 'And the restraints?' Bartholomew asks. 'I don't –'

She's forgotten to mention that part. 'It's the neck, first,' she explains. 'Bhunivelze, in his real body, reaches out a finger and just – snaps it back.' She remembers the horror that tingled in her body at that scene – and every nightmare after. 'Then strikes the body, again and again and it just drifts in space, and the only sounds are the bones breaking – and then he pulls out puppet strings and Hope's just hanging there, empty broken body – ' She can't go on. She really is crying now, and neither Snow nor Bartholomew are comfortable or able to help her. If it was Serah, she'd hug her around the middle. The Hope back in their l'Cie days might have done that too. Who knows? Maybe Snow would have, before a thousand years taught him common sense.

Instead, Bartholomew offers him a tissue and Snow stares at her like she's grown an extra head. 'What?' she snaps at him.

He shakes his head. 'I kind of wish you'd left a bit of him for me to plummet right now,' he mutters.

Her lips twitch. It would have been amusing to watch, but she can't entertain the idea until she's sure Bhunivelze really is nowhere to be found. Nowhere…like in Hope's body, or clinging, like a parasite, to his soul.

.

They leave after the late lunch Nora promised them, because there's nothing to be gained by staying. As unsure as the Estheims are, they still have more experience and, hopefully, a greater understanding under their belts as well.

As for Claire, once again on the backseat of Snow's two-seater motorcycle, she's just got a heavier load to carry back with her.

Snow is silent too, probably thinking the same. He knows little about Bhunivelze, but he's always liked Hope: like a kid brother and a new life can't erase the bonds of the old. Not completely, anyway. Whatever reason Snow's had for not seeking out the others isn't enough to keep him from worrying about them. She's sure of that. Just like she's sure Snow's never stopped loving Serah.

'Will you come for dinner?' Snow asks, finally. 'Serah hasn't seen you for a while.'

'I can't,' Claire replies, more an excuse than anything else. 'I've got work at seven.' She can be a little late for work. She can not show up at all, and though her boss won't be too pleased, he won't fire her for one unexplained absence…or even a few. Sometimes, she wonders how he even runs a business with enough profit to pay his staff and his own life, but he does. Or maybe he's just inherited a ton of cash from his forefathers. 'I'm sorry,' she adds.

'Why?' he returns. 'You've done nothing that warrants an apology to me.'

'Haven't I?' She smiles into his jacket. 'I hadn't been watching the rear before. Hope told me it was okay, that I had – well enough for him, at least. But now I haven't been watching the rear again.'

'None of us have,' Snow reminds. 'We'd all have found each other much earlier if we were.'

She doesn't tell him that she knows where the others are, even if she's never gone to see them for herself.


	11. Chapter 11

His parents are still there. His mother's warm embrace, and his father's strong and steady one.

And then someone else. Big. Strong but a different kind of strong. Familiar. And vanishing into a bright light until there's only grey and the Saviour's shocked face left.

Snow. Completely oblivious to how he's vanishing from existence, being crushed in the palm of a God before he's got the presence of mind to rip himself away and flee, flee so distance can be the shield to protect his friends from an angry God –

But then he's caught, and his mind is torn in two. Lightning – the Saviour – she's trying to hold him still, hold him there and at least it's her because neither of them will ever _dream_ of killing her. But Snow is another matter. They've both wanted to kill him. Both gotten close. Except there's a world of difference between a fourteen year old boy and a God…

But all that is there and gone in a fleeting moment, and a mix of anger and panic engulf him. Anger because the Saviour failed. Panic because it's Lightning – Light – and Bhunivelze wants –

And then the Saviour is gone as well, and there's only a swirling grey and something locking his limbs in place, and he can scream freely: his own scream, without a hint of Bhunivelze's because he's the puppet all trussed up and struggling and he can't get free but he has to. Has to stop. Save. Say.

The words roll into each other, and then the swirling grey as well: a uniform black that's binding him tight and choking him.

.

It's too quiet. The perfect environment for the whispers in his head to be unbearably loud, making him squirm and whimper. He'd fight more if he could, but exhaustion weighs him down more than physical bonds. As far as he can tell, there are no physical bonds right now – but that doesn't matter. There's always the invisible ones, tethering his soul and now, for the last two years, he knows they're there.

Something cool touches him, and fire burns behind his eyes before he forces them open and a fuzzy human shape replaces the scene. 'Oh.' And his mother's voice is shaking but sharp. 'Go back to sleep, sweetie. You've got a fever.'

His mother's right here. So close. Like a dream, or a phantom because he knows she's been dead… But that doesn't matter. She can be the devil of Bhunivelze himself in disguise and he'd still reach for her.

He lifts a hand and the fuzzy human shape disperses into the black.

_I…turned away..?_

But he already knows he did. And he knows why.

.

No-one is around the next time he awakes, and he panics before he realises it's his room and the most familiar place in the world – this world, but even that's not completely true. The room isn't the sanctuary he often mistakes it for, always wants it to be. Not a place Bhunivelze can't get in because he's already here, already deep. Sometimes it's even a prison, where they're both stuck in but can't get out, even when he pounds on the walls until his knuckles crack and bleed.

He doesn't realise he's doing it again until his door bangs open and his parents are there: both of them and he can't quite place what's wrong with the image, why they shouldn't be. He's in his home, isn't he? In his bedroom, in his bed. Why shouldn't his parents be home as well? Because he's mother died an age ago and he turned his back on the possibility of living a reincarnated life with her? Because his father's always at work – or dead as well and a relic of the old world, a foundation they've long forgotten about in favour of the God that succeeded him?

'Whatever did you do in a past life to wind up with me as a son?' He laughs: a short, bitter laugh that grows deeper, longer and – different. No longer that of a boy's, but of a God's and he knows it's slipping that way, knows that guilt that chokes him is slipping away and leaving other emotions instead: frustration, and perhaps a bit of anger as well. 'Why do you stand in my way?'

They've muffled the wall. Not holding him tight like they used to once upon a time because they know they can't hold him, hold God or his puppets when God has the strings. Or maybe he does something he never recalls. Or maybe the God parading in his body does something. He doesn't know and it doesn't really matter. So they've muffled the wall instead. Snuck his pillow and comforter between his body and the wall. Pulled him so he's on the middle of the too large for a teenager bed instead. And when he's not moving anymore, pulling himself up so he's cross-legged and sitting without any other support but the quilt he clutches to his chest while his mother unwraps his fingers so she can clean the wounds and bandage them.

He's not even wearing his gloves. Or his neckerchief. He's still wearing the bright orange square around his right wrist though. Originally just to remember left from right without having to embarrass himself in front of his classmates by tracing L shapes, or so he'd thought except that's not really the case now, is it? He wonders if he's still got his contacts in, or if they've fallen out – or someone's taken them out. There are no mirrors in his room anymore. Or the bathroom. Or in the entrance hall. If there's one in the house at all, it's tucked away in his parents' bedroom where he won't go because that instinct at least is strong enough to bury a God's tendencies. Unless Bhunivelze feels strongly about something or other. Which he doesn't. Not when it comes to his parents, anyway. They're just little offerings to keep him in line. Or the only threads of his humanity that haven't been tainted by that God. He's never sure which it is and it doesn't matter. They're here, phantoms or dreams or real and that's all that's important. If only he was a three year old and complexities didn't matter.

His hands feel cold and his mother's dabbing peroxidase on his scrapes. It doesn't burn though. Is it supposed to? Has it ever? Such simple things he's forgotten. Such simple things that don't matter anymore. What does matter anymore? He's not entirely sure. Making sure Bhunivelze doesn't get a free reign but what does that accomplish? He's powerless when push comes to shove, after all. Just so happens the God is willing to sit more or less quietly for the time being. Or something. He doesn't understand. Never has understand. Why he's even necessary. Why he's so important. Why he'd been born with silver hair and green eyes to match the God's image in human translation so perfectly, as though he'd been fated for this role as a puppet, long before becoming a l'Cie.

_And to think I whined so much then!_ He laughs. The rage is a dim echo he can barely recall now. Against Snow. Against the Sanctum. Of course, that's before Snow has to play Hero and destroy that possibility. Before Snow is crushed in the palm of a God. Before Snow shows up in the entrance hall. And he was scared before. He remembers that. Frightened. And eager and squashing that eagerness down with fear. That's how it was before – when? Sleep or unconsciousness make him lose track of time. And the quiet. A hundred and sixty-nine years passing by in the Ark.

'Hope?'

He's still laughing but there's no feeling behind it. No drive. Just an empty echo and he's not even sure why he bothers.

.

It's still dark. The windows and blinds are drawn and his father's turned the radio on before leaving so there's the illusion of a crowd that can't touch him and he can't touch them, and it seeps into his empty brain and too full soul and lets him find a sort of mindless balance there. A balance that's sometimes good and sometimes bad. Let's him lose himself in some dream, or some routine. Or lets a whispering voice take over and lead him like the meek little puppet he's become and he lacks the presence of mind to do anything about it at all.

This night, there's whispers in his mind, stirred up by visitors instead of home. The strings around his neck and arms, holding him aloft before they spiral away with the instruments. The pink hair that nuzzles his cheeks. The strong but thin arms that really should be holding a sword instead of him. The shadow he missed in the doorway. And his mind's rewinding, fishing further and further, not realising he's shaved bits of the memories off, or is mis-remembering them – like Snow's sudden absence, or presence, or his motorcycle fitting nowhere, and like her hair now dyed black… It's just Saviour, Saviour, Saviour and the steady drum of it propels him out of bed and out the door.


	12. Chapter 12

Work is like a dream for her this night. She's exhausted both physically and mentally, and the lull of routine is enough to let her tuck her mind and heart away and let her body rule. It's a bad idea in hindsight, but she can't bring herself to care. Can't care her body's been, for an eternity, honed for fighting – and not the clumsy drunken brawls that occur and that letting herself be inattentive means she's not pulling any punches and she's chosen a place to work where she _needs_ to be able to pull her punches.

And she's not surprised when her boss – at the end of his saintly patience, no doubt – pulls her aside. 'You know, you got a few hits with the baton.'

She blinks. No, she doesn't – though if she has, she'll feel them in the morning when they bruise.

'This isn't the first time.'

'I'm sorry.' She's not sure what else to say. She can't promise to do better. It'll be an empty promise if she does.

He shakes his head. 'I've wondered,' he admits, not sounding annoyed – because she wonders if he's even capable of annoyance sometimes but knows he must be, such a human reaction it is, 'why you'd chose to stay in a place like this.'

A bitter smile worms its way to her lips. 'Selfish reasons.' She doesn't know why his expression prompts her to elaborate, but it does. And she does. 'I'm helping people drown their sorrows or fatigue or…whatever. Saving no-one.' And there's another reason too. 'And you remind me of someone.'

'Oh? Someone good, I hope.'

She snorts at the mention of "hope", but doesn't answer him.

'But I've wondered,' he continues, 'if you're not just holding yourself back out of…gratitude or something.' He blushes lightly. Innocently. _How does a guy like this wind up running a bar?_ she wonders. 'But your answer is "selfish".'

And she realises she didn't need to give him the details at all. "Selfish" is enough of an answer to placate him. And yet…it doesn't matter anymore. It's not an important enough reason for him to need, or want, to fight for her. And she's got no idea where to start looking because she wants a job free from responsibilities and where does someone find a job like that? Even in the bar, its part of the job description: to make sure none of the customers are heading towards alcohol poisoning or the likes. The bouncers of course have it tougher: they need to watch out for drunken brawls and breaking them up when they happen, party drugs that shouldn't be floating around any legal place and bars are still legal, and then their day job of checking IDs and faces.

'I'll bring in the uniform tomorrow,' she says.

'Please.' He nods at her, though he seems surprised as well. Planning a speech he's now spared the trouble of giving, or so it seems. Or she's misunderstood something and that's the least likely differential. After all, it's not the first time she's harassed customers more than usual. Not the first time they've had to call in the ambulance for them and have to borrow some of Serah's teaching salary for the fines because her own meagre one doesn't cut it. Serah won't accept money back, either, and that's a mixed blessing in disguise. She takes days of babysitting instead. Days that are piling up because she's not willing to accept the fact that either she or Snow is barren and keeps on trying and Snow's too much of a teddy bear to push for adoption – or there's something deeper there and it's another stab to her gut that tells her she's never bothered finding out.

She tunes back in to her boss – ex-boss – in time to catch the tail-end of his commentary. 'Do you know how to use a baton?'

She blinks. What have batons got to do with the conversation…except the bruises that will grow throughout the day. 'Not specifically,' she replies. 'I can use guns and blades – short or long.' And gunblades, but those don't seem to exist in this new world.

He shakes his head. 'You should be in the police force.' _No,_ she thinks. _Definitely not._ 'Being a bouncer is probably beneath you.'

'Wait.' Her mind races to consolidate that statement with the rest of it. 'You're – not firing me?'

He looks appalled at the question. _Right, too nice and idealistic for his own good. I forget._ Still, it doesn't top Hope hiring his future murderer – in multiple timelines – as his assistant. Most people had some subconscious feeling that nudged them away from danger after the third or fourth repeat, but not Hope. But the biggest destroyer had come only once and there'd never been a chance to dodge.

But it's not Hope right now. It's her boss, and they're discussing her employment. 'You've tried to be a waitress,' he explains, 'but it's not good for you and it's not good for the customers either. They're less likely to harass a bouncer and you can feel more relaxed in…ahh, warding off unwanted advances.'

Might make them less likely too, she thinks. A bouncer is far more off-putting than a sullen waitress. But being a bouncer also means protecting people. Keeping them safe. 'I'm sorry,' she says, and she is sorry because here's a guy who's given her a tolerable job and now she's throwing it in his face. 'I can't.'

'Why not?' he's confused. He can't see she doesn't want the responsibility of _anyone_ on her shoulders even if that's not possible because she's got Serah and Snow and now Hope and maybe she'll have to check on the others again as well –

'I just can't.'

He offers to keep her as a waitress. Even with the assault charges she'll have to ask for a "loan" from Serah to pay off again.

She turns him down. It's one too many, these distractions.

.

_What next?_ she wonders. She needs to look at picking up another job and soon because she's never had much saved up. Not in this new world, anyway. Maybe a librarian? But she's pretty sure one needs a course for that. Two courses, actually. Cleaner? No way. The thought repulses her; exactly what Bhunivelze had tricked her into doing in the old world. Maybe she can be a fighting instructor. Who was it that had joked about that once upon a time? But she still needs certification before she can go and do something like that. Quick fixes – don't really seem to exist in this world. The simplest helping out in the store jobs are always reserved for the youth: people Hope's age. But maybe she can find some filing or phoning job.

She sighs. She's grown complacent. Wants to be complacent. _I know I'm just running away, but…_ She's spent too long fighting. Too long saving the world. _Honestly, the world should be grateful I'm not destroying it instead._

And yet, there are some people she can't turn her back on. _Not that I've done much to help._ Serah and Snow. All she is is a witness on their marriage certificate and that's because Serah insisted. And the occasional visitor, asking favours from one or the other now that she's thrown her pride – or that part of it – out the window, and doing favours in return when she can and it's never much. She's storing them all up, for a time that looks more and more like it'll never come.

And then there's Hope, and she's no clearer on the burning question than she was before the visit to the Estheims.

Or…that's a lie. She knows the real Hope – that sweet little boy turned strong and smart man – is in there, no matter if or how much of Bhunivelze attempts to drown it. Bhunivelze has no reason whatsoever to flee from Snow while Hope, potentially, has three. Or maybe two. Did he say Snow's name? She can't remember now. She can remember things from over a thousand years ago, but not something from yesterday.

What she doesn't know is how much of Bhunivelze is there as well.

.

Her landline's ringing when she gets home, and she misses it in unlocking the door. It rings again in a few minutes though, urgently, and she snatches it up.

It's Bartholomew again, and this time he's in a panic – a panic she's never heard. Even when his house was aflame. Even when they left him, trussed and defenceless. Even when she took his son away, and he didn't know if they'd ever meet again.

'Hope's gone!' he gasps. 'I mean, he's done this before, but not in the middle of the night! And he hasn't taken anything: no shoes, or wallet, or transport card – He's still in his _pyjamas!_ '

_He won't last long,_ she finds herself thinking. She's been worrying about her own funds and here's a boy who's run off without even a cent. 'He can't have gotten far,' she says aloud, instead.

'He's not in town.' Still frustrated. Panicked. Far from his usual calm. 'Nora and I've already looked. Asked a few neighbours to drive out, but –'

It's morning and they've found nothing yet. That's why he's calling. 'What do you want me to do?' She's phrased it wrong, she realises belatedly. Should have said "what can I do" but it's too late, and it doesn't seem to matter.

'Just – if you see him –'

'Of course.' But it's too little. Too little.

_'…when Vanille saves the souls of the dead, what will happen to me? My soul?'_

_'Hope? What –'_

_Too little. Too late._


	13. Chapter 13

At some point in his new life, he read a book called The Long Walk. In it, the characters walk nonstop for over two nights, passing many towns along the long and empty flat road just to prove they can – or can't. If they stop, they're warned. Three warnings and they're shot. Last one standing wins the race and it's a race of the dead for death, because the winner gets a load of cash and their own corpse, still thinking it's alive. A horror tale more potent than any other he's read and now he knows why. He's on the long walk now, and he knows the moment he drops, he'll be fighting again and there's a fog in his head, thick and palpable like an anaesthetic haze and he can keep walking because it's there, dulling the world.

He doesn't know where he's going or why, but he's walking straight so it must be towards something. To somewhere. And the road's not empty. The spectators watching him. The guards ready to shoot if he falters. The other walkers on the road – shadows or real, past or present. In any case, there's always two: the puppet and the God and he's under no illusions that he can outlast said God.

Who picked the direction, anyway? It's too late to wander. The road is set, and the race and he's walking and he can't stop. He needs to get somewhere and he needs to be alive at the end of the road.

.

They're taking the same road as yesterday. Claire's not sure what makes her call Snow again but here they are, her having hooked her arms around her brother in law's waist as they sail through the countryside. Snow's focused on the road. Her job is to watch both sides of it. Looking for green hair in green foliage – maybe the choice of dye had less to do with reversing the image than she'd initially thought – or at least orange pyjama clothes.

And she spots them, finally. Before she does some quick math in her head and realises that, for him to be where he is, he's walked all night. Literally. And he's still walking, one foot in front of the other and head down, like he can't stop, like he's forgotten how to stop. Even the sound of the engine cutting as Snow parks the bike haphazardly doesn't make him look up or around. Nor his name when they shout it: Claire solo, then the two of them together.

And even when Claire grabs his shoulder, he just continues walking. Making her stumble because she's reaching for him and not restraining him, and he's just walking on like she's not touching him at all.

It takes Snow's brute strength to make him stop. Snow who manages to lift him completely off the ground and he doesn't struggle, doesn't speak. And Snow's words are gentle, unlike his hold which is rough at the best of times and even rougher now. 'Hey, kid. You're back to being a kid again, you know. Remember me? Remember that dumb blond hero?'

The boy just hung limply, staring with green eyes – contactless eyes. Only his legs moved. Twitching, as though they want to keep walking still but have realised there was no ground underneath his feet. An impasse, until Claire decides to try her luck and she tips a scale she can't see with her call.

She doesn't know why this one reaches his ears when the first one doesn't, but the boy stiffens, then looks up and his eyes are burning. 'Saviour,' he says, voice dull and – familiar. _Bhunivelze._ 'My failed Saviour.'

'Hope!' Snow shakes him, unaware. In danger.

Claire has a warning on her lips – but it comes too late. Hope – Bhunivelze – has already lifted a leg and kicked the other between the legs. Luckily, Snow is made of sturdier stuff, even in this new life of his. He stumbles and grunts in pain, but he's still holding on to the other boy. Stopping him from running away, or doing something else. Not stopping him from kicking again, but she comes closer. Maybe she can.

Her fingers tighten around an invisible sword. She remembers driving it into Bhunivelze's chest, into his head, into his heart. Three lethal strikes and he's still here, echo or otherwise. And she can't even rebuke his claim because she has failed: failed to save the last soul she'd said she'd save.

'Hope!' She repeats it sharply. No change. The real Hope is tired from his long walk. Asleep. She switches tactics. 'Bhunivelze!'

Snow really does drop the boy this time, but he lands gracefully. Puppet-like. God-like. Turning to stare at Claire, as though Snow has faded out of existence, as though he's forgettable – and one thing Snow isn't is forgettable. Not to humans anyway.

At least there's a line. Is that a good thing or bad? She doesn't know.

The boy stands straight. Green hair and green eyes, boring into her. 'What do you want?' she snaps at him. The most powerful weapon she has available to her: her words.

'Freedom.' His lips barely move.

_Freedom?_ Then he is as much a prisoner of Hope as Hope is of him?

But he hasn't finished speaking yet.

'And for you to – ' He cuts off, eyes bulging, body pitching forward. Snow catches him again and this time he struggles: arms and legs, and chest, heaving as though something wants to explode. His eyes have squeezed shut, his fists clenched. 'Stop. Stop!'

'Hope. Hope!' Snow shakes the boy again, and this time it rattles through his thin frame and forces him limp, unconscious.

.

'What the hell?' Snow snaps at her, after they've stopped moving again. Because they couldn't leave an unconscious sixteen year old on the country highway. So they took him home. Then tagged along to the hospital because he'd picked up a fever on the way and his feet needed some looking into anyway. And now they hung outside because the waiting room is oppressive in a way neither of them can stand.

And, it seems, there's something else Snow can't stand.

'What?' Claire asks. She knows what. Maybe she just wants someone else to draw that conclusion too. Or doesn't want to say it herself.

'Why did you call Hope – _that_?' He chokes on the name. Never utters even a syllable of it. In his mind, Hope and Bhunivelze and the current world can't be in the same sentence because, because that means she's failed.

And she wonders which failure's the real one. After all, it was Hope who told her it didn't matter how many times she failed in the past, so long as she succeeded in the end. _But I didn't, did I Hope? I failed you one times too many._

'You never met him,' she sighs. He can't see. Or maybe he can. 'Bhunivelze. Regal and arrogant, but not as incapable of understanding human emotion as he thinks. He feels grief for the old world. Anger at me for ruining everything.' She smiles bitterly. 'Especially anger at me. As for you…I think that's all Hope, because you're nothing except dust in the palm of a God to him. Just like Serah. And the others.' _Even Vanille…and why? Because she doesn't sing the Soulsong after all?_

'Bhunivelze had him for a hundred and sixty-nine years.' Snow closed his eyes.

'It has nothing to do with that,' Claire interrupts. 'I just – failed to save Hope. Again. One time too many.'

And he can't rebuke that, because there's no proof to the contrary. Is Bhunivelze still alive, or is it the echoes, the trauma burned permanently into Hope's soul. Either way, she's failed, and of the two it's only Bhunivelze she can fight.

'You weren't the only one protecting him,' Snow frowns. 'I made that promise first, to his mother. Noel promised, in one of the paradoxes – which, funnily enough, screwed with a lot of things and we had to hope Hope could escape his assassination by himself because we just messed things up even more –'

'I know.' She saw it all from Valhalla. 'We should've gotten Vanille to use her death magic on him.'

Snow snorts. 'Maybe that's why he likes you more than her. Scarred of an eighteen year old with pigtails.'

It is amusing, but far too late. She doubts the Vanille of this world still has that power.

'But…' The humour's dropped out of his voice, leaving it vulnerable. 'He's still in the Unseen Realm, right? I mean, Caius or one of the Yuels would tell us if something went wrong.'

'Not if I chopped out a bit of him when I pulled out Hope,' Claire muses. 'I mean, he was still fourteen after all that. Still fourteen now. His soul's not fourteen. Far from it. Why isn't he an adult in this world? Or is it just because we're born the same distance away from each as we originally were – but that's not true either.' She's no good at this. It's Hope's domain, hypothesising. And then finding the solution. Like the new cocoon. And she was sure that, if he'd had those five hundred years as he should have, he'd have cracked the problem of Chaos as well. _Hope, you could outsmart even a God if you wanted to._

'Sis,' Snow begins, before sighs heavily. 'What's done is done. We can't change it. We just have to fix what we have.'

_Kill Bhunivelze all over again? Or convince Hope it's all just a figment of his imagination?_

'And not just Hope.' Snow's hands fold into one other. 'Serah told me you quit your job.'

'I'm looking for a new one.' It's not a lie. She is looking. Thinking. Just not particularly hard.


	14. Chapter 14

 

His body is a cage, for the both of them. Bhunivelze knows it, and in the last two years, Hope has come to understand it too. Oh, he’d always known his body is a cage for him, but the presence of the God is something that had been beyond his understanding until the memories returned.

Bhunivelze wants to do more goad his Saviour for her failure. There’s nothing to gain from it, except a sense of self-satisfaction that doesn’t exist. Perhaps then, he’s afraid of her. Makes Hope, when he’s the one that’s more aware, want to be close to her. Not like his parents, who Bhunivelze doesn’t interfere with. But a form of protection nonetheless.

But that’s a fleeting dream and he knows it. Knows it when he hears grunts of pain, past and present. Feels blood on the pads of his fingers. Feels the air stinging his raw knuckles or the skin under his nails, exposed. If it’s something good for him, he’ll relax and then Bhunivelze will have as much freedom as a fragile human body can give. It’s too dangerous. Too dangerous. Peace and safety. Both of them come at too high prices.

If he’d regained his memories earlier, he might have wondered what would happen to the God in his soul when he dies. Before he lifted the knife to his wrists of his own violation. Before he’d struggled against the God who tried to deflect his strikes until the yellow loops around his wrists were caked red with blood. But he fails. He wakes up in a hospital three days later, with his parents and lots of doctors and treatments that hurt far more than the persisting sting in his wrists and that’s the only thing they give him painkillers for. And he tries again and again: more lethal, faster, methods and they all fail. The last is a jab to carotid that’s supposed to take a person out in seconds and he still survives it. Bhunivelze deflects the strike enough to give him minutes, instead.

And by the time his memories return, he’s far too deep to care about the consequences. But he also knows the fervour pitch like he’s worked himself into some years ago is pointless. He won’t die so easily. He needs to outsmart a God – and, worse, a God who can read his body and his soul. It’s his _raison d’etre_ now and everything else is trying to find a little comfort, or a little possibility, or simply slipping out of control.

.

He’s in the hospital. It’s been a while since he’s been here, and he doesn’t know if that’s good or bad. Bad because he hates them. They’re supposed to make things better but they never do. They just make things worse. And, from a purely objective point of view, they’re the reason he’s still alive. And then there’s the other stuff they do. The gaping holes in his memory, far worse than when he’s at home, or wandering the streets, looking for a cosy little pocket where he can plot against a God or just escape him.

_But you can’t._

He feels something around his wrists and he panics and flails and they move and he forces himself to relax once more. There are restraints, soft and padded, but loose. More to stop him getting off the bed than stop him moving at all. His ankles are likewise shackled. Trapped in bed. His heart screams again, but logic, there’s logic there and they show him his heavily wrapped feet and he’s sure he’ll walk on them anyway if not for being loosely tied to the bed and someone – his parents – have made sure they’re not too tight, that he can still breathe and fight with his mind.

And when they come in, he’s exhausted, too exhausted to wonder if they’re dead or phantoms again, too exhausted to worry Bhunivelze might have something else planned and if that’s their plan, it’s a sneaky one and it’s worked. He basks in their embrace, their arms weaving around his bound form and there’s no whisper in his mind to jar him back to reality and, foolishly, he wishes things can just stay like this.

They can’t. They never do.

.

He’s surprised to find an unfamiliar girl the next time he wakes – or woman, rather, even if she is small and petite and easily mistaken for a child. Her hair is pink and that’s the first thing that catches her attention, until he’s sure – or Bhunivelze’s sure – that she isn’t the Saviour.

And, after that, Hope remembers her hair was dyed black the last time he saw her.

                ‘Are you hungry?’ the girl – woman – asks. She’s got a purse hanging on one arm, and a container in her hands. She’s smiling kindly at him, as though she knows him but he can’t recall. Maybe she does know him. Alyssa gives him that look as well, except there’s more weight in hers. A weight he still doesn’t understand.

In any case, she’s a stranger and he wants to know. ‘Who are you?’

She blinks, a flash of hurt appearing, before vanishing again. _Like Lightning._ And he wonders why the thought crosses her mind and almost misses her reply. ‘I’m Serah. You don’t remember?’ He shakes his head. _Serah, Serah_ – No, wait. He does. The echo of her name, sung like a song. The Saviour’s song. He knows the name, yes. But not what it means. Something beyond the understanding of a God.

_Until now._

                ‘Serah Villiers née Farron,’ she says. Her full name. _Farron. Lightning. The Saviour._

                ‘Th – Lightning’s sister.’ He almost slips. Bites his tongue to stop that cursed word escaping his lips. It’s always a bitter taste on his tongue and yet it slips anyway, again and again and again.

                ‘Yes.’ And she looks hopeful, before a small frown dances upon her lips. ‘I met you in the Pulse Vestige first, I think. Just before I turned to crystal. And then when we were all set free. Then 10AF – ‘ She babbles about a few more dates, but he doesn’t know any time called AF and so those babbles don’t matter. The crystal though: he does remember that, vaguely. More the death of his mother and the brand that burnt itself into the skin of his wrist than anything else, and even those events, so strong back then, dimmed with what had come in the future.

 _Serah. Lightning’s sister. And her raison d’etre._ The last one is a mere hypothesis at this point, but it makes sense.

                ‘Hope? Is something the matter?’

He’s staring at her now, unblinking. Bhunivelze used her, even though she wasn’t there – and where was she? Dead? Murdered? Locked away? Remade like him? He should know this. He doesn’t. Just that she – the her made by God, so woefully incomplete – was carrot to dangle in his Saviour’s face. ‘Are you real?’ he wonders. ‘Or the puppet made by God as well?’

Her eyes widen. Her lips part. She’s got a faint idea of what he’s talking about, it seems. Faint, but incomplete. Then she quivers, tosses down her container and purse, and embraces him.

He stiffens against her. He doesn’t recognise her embrace and it’s too tight, too stifling, a phantom in his mind, _you can’t escape me_ –

.

His wrists hurt, though his ankles hurt more. He’s not entirely sure why. It’s not like he’s tried to get up and walk before his feet heal…or he doesn’t remember doing so. His room is empty this time, but it doesn’t take long to fill and they distract him sufficiently. Bhunivelze never really tries in a hospital anyway. Too firmly tied to manage anything.

It’s a sort of solace, but it comes with too many other prices to bear. Like Serah’s guilty and worried face, and both of those things are his fault and he knows it. He expects Lightning is glaring in his direction as well, though he doesn’t check. ‘I’m sorry,’ he says, looking at the crook of Serah’s elbow. The purse is dangling from there again. And there’s a container in her hand again. And something sitting on top of it. Completely unfamiliar.

She catches him staring, and smiles. ‘I’m sorry too,’ she says. ‘Claire warned me, but I saw how sad you looked and sounded and just – forgot.’ She offers the stuffed animal to him. ‘It’s Mog,’ she explains, and there’s a gasp of surprise behind her, and a snort and he realises Snow is towering behind the two as well. _He really doesn’t get it, does he?_ ‘I tried to make it look like him, anyway.’

He can’t cuddle it to his chest like stuffed animals should be – and never mind that he’s too old for them anyway, because he’s really not – but he clutches it in one hand and it’s _there_ and under his control and those two are the most important. And Mog, as though it should be familiar. It’s not. He wracks his brain but can’t remember anyone or anything called a Mog.

                ‘You don’t remember?’ He stiffens. That’s Lightning – _Saviour_. She knows. And she should know better but she’s suddenly everywhere.

                ‘Go away,’ he mutters, not quite sure if he’s talking to her or to the shadows, that pesky God, in his mind. But the words tumble from his lips like a mantra: ‘Go away, go away, go away –‘

                ‘Whoa there, kid – ‘

                ‘Hope – ‘

Snow and Serah. Important. Both important. One a raison d’etre. Both – all three – needing to stay far away from a God who’d crush them in his palm if he ever got the means again –

But he can’t do that when in a weak sixteen year old body restrained to a hospital bed and that’s only a small mercy that’s easily forgotten in a frenzy.

 

 


	15. Chapter 15

 

Claire is not pleased that Snow’s seen it fit to tell the whole story – or as much as he’s grasped, which is almost as much as her – to his wife. And she’s also not pleased to find out that Serah’s pulled out her emergency leave, packed a few things, and met them at the Estheims. They don’t mind. Of course they don’t: she’s Miss Farron’s little sister and Snow Villier’s wife and one of the people responsible in saving his life when the paradoxes and Caius were determined to take him out. But even if Serah had none of that backing her, Claire doubts the Estheims would have minded too much anyway. Anything that can help their son is a blessing to them. But Claire doubts Serah can help. Hope’s shown no hint that he recalls his adult years at all and worse are his reactions to Snow. And Serah is far smaller and frailer than Snow.

But she comes anyway. And she’s displeased to have been kept out of the loop for so long so Claire has to sigh and tell her the rest of it, the things Snow’s forgotten, or glossed over. Especially the restraining thing because Snow restrained him without too much trouble (minus the kick that had him limping for a bit afterwards and that was too well thought out to be frantic). And, by chance, she’s the only one in the room when Hope’s awake and they have some smattering of a conversation before she moves on instinct and hugs him like hugs can take all the problems of the world away (and she only wishes they could). But they can’t, and he jerks and screams and seizes and a nurse comes with a sedative and Serah cries an apology before she’s dragged away.

She spends the next couple of days trying to recreate Mog as a plushie doll, and Claire wonders where his soul has gotten to. And the Eiodolins. She’s seen Odin reincarnated once already as the Angel of Valhalla and yet she’s never thought of their place in this world. Other things she’s turned her back on without realising it.

Serah’s finished with her doll when they drop in after a nurse and find Hope awake again. Hope doesn’t seem to see her or Snow at first, just Serah. And takes the doll well, to their surprise. Though there’s no flash of familiarity at the mention of Mog. A hint of question instead, perhaps.

It begs for confirmation. ‘You don’t remember?’

His eyes snap to her and, just like that, the fragile peace is shattered. He’s realised they’re there – she and Snow – and realised something about Serah too, because there’s no gentle lull to their next meeting, just the shrieks that escalate and chase them out.

.

He keeps trying to push them away. Her, Snow…and now Serah too. He’s pushed away his friends – or they’re a bunch of weak souls that don’t deserve him. She can’t tell if he’s pushing at his parents or they’ve been spared. It’s something about the unconditional love a parent gives their child and the way he can leave his house and then, of his own free will, return…because she’s sure it doesn’t suit Bhunivelze’s designs, whatever they are, to have Hope surrounded by _anyone_ and yet his parents have stayed. Is it the strength of a parent’s bond with their child, she wonders, or is it a special part of the Estheim family? And Sazh – Sazh is the same, with Dajh, sacrificing everything… But not all parents are like that and she’s seen the other kind as well.

In any case, she’s happy when, in a couple of weeks, she receives a call from Nora saying they’ve brought Hope safely back home. They’ve long since returned to their homes, not frightened away per say but not wanting to push as well. _Someone has to push, at some point_ , she thinks. But not yet. Not now.

Hope remembers his time as a l’Cie, or parts of it at least, and as Bhunivelze’s puppet but not the intervening time. The lack of memory of Mog, the indifference to Serah at first…they’re both proof of that. And his memories of her… still, not once, as he called her Light and it makes her want to scream inside because it just makes her more and more sure that Bhunivelze’s got more strings than Hope does and that makes it all the more hopeless.

And how to fight him is another matter. It’s easy to fight a God that has a body separate to his human host but now? It’s a mental battle all the way and how are they supposed to do that? And who? Not them if he can’t even stand being near them – _but I didn’t stay for very long, did I?_

Maybe in a few days, she can try again.

.

She puts it off. She knows she’s putting it off. Serah and Snow go to see him and get a few morsels to pass along to her, and she accepts them. Though they only confirm what she’s guessed – but that’s not true at all, is it? She feels a spark of hope at their words. That he’s afraid they’ll get hurt again. Dust in the palm of a God and especially Serah who’s the carrot he’d dangled in her face…

The memory should anger her, but it’s drowned out by something else because that’s such a _Hope_ thing to think and say and do that she just laughs in relief. ‘Kid would do something like that.’

Serah is silent a moment on the other end. ‘Claire?’ she asks, finally. ‘How do we fight Bhunivelze without hurting Hope?’

                ‘Words,’ she replies. ‘I honestly can’t think of anything else.’

But how do you fight with words when the person who needs to listen to them just runs away?

.

She’s surprised to find Noel at her house one day. Even more surprised when he punches her. Not so surprised when she punches him back, and they wind up in a brawl in the one room apartment she’s about to be kicked out of because she hasn’t coughed up this month’s rent.

                ‘It’s not like you to sit around doing nothing,’ Noel coughs, when they’re on their backs and panting.

She can see how he almost beat her last time. And why she’d trusted him with Serah.

But she can see a resemblance to Snow as well. The old Snow, that is. The one that keeps on getting under her skin.

                ‘I’m not running away,’ she hisses.

                ‘Are you sure?’ Noel asks back. ‘Because seems to me you haven’t visited the kid in two months, haven’t gotten yourself another job – ‘ Now how does he know that? ‘You’re better than this, Lightning.’

                ‘Claire,’ she corrects.

                ‘Whatever.’ He shrugs. ‘A name is just a name. Point is, you’re better than this.’

                ‘Yeah, right.’ She closes her eyes. Noel’s right here, and there is something… ‘Does Yuel know?’

                ‘If Bhunivelze’s still in the Unseen Realm, you mean? No, she doesn’t.’

 _Damn._ They were still fighting blind.

                ‘Not that it really matters.’ Noel sits up. ‘What are you going to do? Chop poor Hope’s head off?’

She jerks up. ‘Of course not!’ she cries. ‘I won’t hurt Hope.’

                ‘And words can’t hurt?’ He stares at her, blue eyes to blue. ‘Or is it because you just don’t know what words to say?’

                ‘I don’t know,’ she admits, staring at her lap. _Look at me, and how far I’ve fallen_.

                ‘How the mighty fall,’ says Noel, thinking the same thing. ‘Hope’s not the only one who needs help. We’ve all got demons from the past.’

Claire closes her eyes. ‘Why are you here, Noel?’

                ‘To knock some sense into you,’ is the immediate reply, before he coughs and corrects himself. ‘I mean, the plan wasn’t originally to –‘

                ‘Physically knock sense into me?’ she asks dryly. ‘That sounds like a me thing to do, you know.’

                ‘…no,’ he admits, after a pause. ‘Not the you I know, anyway. Not that I know very much of you.’

                ‘I suppose not.’ Their meetings have been fleeting at best. Valhalla, before she tossed him into the gate. Then that little meeting pre-final battle with Caius and he was essentially the third wheel. Then there were the few times at Saviour and Shadow Hunter respectively. And now. ‘I also can’t imagine you barging into my house uninvited, and yet here you are.’

                ‘Blame Serah,’ is his response. ‘She’s worried.’

It’s never occurred to her that Serah’s kept in contact with anyone from the old world…aside from Snow.

                ‘Sorry,’ Claire says again. ‘My cozy little life has stumbled a little bit.’

He snorts. ‘Cozy? You call being a waitress in a bar and getting fined at least once a month cozy?’

She glares at him. ‘I _like_ the bar.’

                ‘But not being a waitress.’

It’s a good tactic, she grudgedly admits. Get her tired physically so she can’t get up and leave the conversation. ‘Not particularly,’ she admits, ‘but it’s better than being a bouncer.’

                ‘Because you feel like you couldn’t save everyone – or Hope in particular, guess it doesn’t matter which – so you feel like you don’t deserve a job with that kind of responsibility?’

She’s surprised. He’s gotten it in a nutshell, pretty much.

                ‘I’m sorry I punched you.’

                ‘What?’

She can see his self-decrepitating smile from the angle she’s lying at. ‘I’m not exactly better, myself. Never was.’

She can’t see the rest of his expression, but she can imagine it.

                ‘Couldn’t protect Yuel. Couldn’t protect Serah. Screw everything up by killing Caius.’

                ‘Never mind that he ran himself through on your blade without your input,’ she sighs, but she can see where this is going now. ‘But you’re still with Yuel, aren’t you?’

                ‘We live together, yes.’ His lips twist. ‘We’ve had more than the fair share of disagreements. She’s taking this opportunity to live like she’s never been able to, and, well –‘

                ‘I worked in a bar,’ she snorts. ‘I get what you mean.’

                ‘Still think Caius is going to kill me when I die.’

She snorts again. ‘Sounds like something he would do.’

He cracks a smile. ‘It does, doesn’t it? But if Yuel finds her happiness by tasting everything.’ He closes his eyes. ‘I expected you to be smothering Serah.’

                ‘I figured she and Snow deserved their space.’ It hadn’t worked out quite the way she planned, though.

                ‘I figured there’d be a bunch of mini-Snows running around by now,’ he agrees. ‘But somehow, I don’t think Serah would forget to mention that.’

                ‘No,’ she agrees. ‘She wouldn’t.’

They’re silent again. Her front door creaks and she realises neither of them has bothered to close it, but she doesn’t care. Worse things than a brawl in the entrance have happened.


	16. Chapter 16

 

She’s not sure if she and Noel accomplish anything, in the end. He winds up staying for a measly dinner and then showing himself out, and she plops on the bed and stares at the ceiling and misses the fact that she’s not going out to work tonight.

A fleeting part of her wonders if she shouldn’t hit the streets anyway, but she discards the idea. She’s not that driven. Or desperate.

So she thinks instead. What sort of job she can get – and she has to hurry up before she winds up a permanent border in her sister’s home.  And her friends from the old world, that have scattered so far and yet so near now. And Caius, and Bhunivelze, and Hope…

Hope again. That kid really knows how to stay in her mind.

She remembers Noel’s words. Is it because she just doesn’t know what to say or is she afraid to try and save him after failing so many times? It’s Serah and Noel who’ve saved him in the past: Augusta Tower, the assassination attempt in Academia, all the paradoxes caused by Alyssa just trying to survive… It was a shock to realise she’s alive in this world, and that she remembers the paradoxes as well but she can’t undo what she’s done, not in her mind, and it seems, to the Estheims, she’s been only a very small help.

And new faces, or other fleeting old ones, have been no help at all by the sounds of things. Worse than no help at all.

_This was supposed to be a new chance, for all of us…_

Yuel seems to be taking advantage of it. A little over the top, from Noel’s concerns. But she is. And Serah and Snow – they’re trying. Not every avenue because they don’t want to admit defeat right now, but they’re trying. But she’s still drifting and Noel’s stuck in the same role again, watching Yuel slip out through his fingers like honey…

_Am I doing the same with Hope?_

Worse, she can’t decide whether she should just leave things be or follow up on it.

 _Hope didn’t abandon me._  
Hope also became God’s puppet.  
And rescued me from the chaos after I saved him, turning his back on his family as he did it.  
…but did I really save him?

And there’s the crux of the matter. Always that. She’d gotten no eradia from Hope. Didn’t need any eradia from Hope but she also hadn’t needed Vanille’s and Fang’s and yet she’d gotten them anyway. But not from Hope. And yet Hope is here, in this new world. Not left behind when the old world finally drowned under chaos of Bhunivelze’s light. It’s an equation whose solution she thinks she has but can’t prove, and her solution is twofold.

Saving the souls didn’t mean they’d live happily ever after. A person who died without regrets could live a second longer and have some and that had happened to all of them. And then there was Hope, a special case. Saddled with Bhunivelze because she hadn’t managed to carve him out and drop the entirety of him into the chaos.

The first can’t be helped. Or it can, but with the people of the present and not the past. But the second… _It’s my fault._ She knows it. Just like with Serah in the old world. _My fault._

His neck is tugged back and snaps. She winces at the sound. Bile claws its way up her throat. She shakes her head to get rid of it, and the nausea stabs at her throat. _I’m not even asleep, for fuck’s sake._ But it doesn’t seem to matter. She’s suddenly swept up in a waking nightmare and she can’t get out of it.

Not until there’s a puddle of vomit on the floor and a broken picture frame where she’s clawed it off the table. And a few droplets of blood on her palm where she’s crushed the glass.

It’s still a while before she gets up to clean it all, and it won’t matter if she never does clean it. It will affect no-one but her.

.

Noel’s left a few bruises on her body and, the next morning, they all scream at her. Call her a coward. Weak. Never mind that Noel didn’t say those words. But it doesn’t matter because she still hasn’t done anything about…anything. Still no job. Still hasn’t talked to Hope. Or to her sister and brother in law for that matter, knowing they’ve got their own troubles and she’s just thrown extra ones at them.

But her failures have gotten worse and worse. Her second last one brought about the end of the world. This last one has the potential to undo the victory they thought they’d snatched from the jaws of a death and chaos – but if Bhunivelze has access to this world as well, they’ve gained nothing. Defeated nothing.

And now…it’s nearly impossible to defeat him, wrapped up in Hope as he is. _Hope… Can’t I help you?_ But Hope had screamed at them. Chased them out. And before… Hope ran away from her. Twice. Or was it three or four? Kicked Snow enough to make him hurt in an effort to get away from them. _Stupid kid, trying to protect us._ It left no room at all for them.

.

She only moves because it’s the last night. The landlady will be there next morning to demand her overdue payment and it’s to Serah’s couch if she can’t cough it up.

 _I didn’t have to do this._ And she knows it, but she’s let it come to this anyway. _How the mighty have fallen,_ she repeats with some amusement. The old her had considered this and gone and joined the army instead. It’s no longer a possibility for her. No longer an issue, either, because there’s a vast difference between the virginity of a fifteen year old, and a woman that’s lived over a thousand years in forced chastity. Because she hadn’t had the time, at first: busy looking after Serah, being a l’Cie, fighting Caius, being the Saviour – and when she thought she’d saved every soul she could (except Hope, because she’d forgotten that voice in her ear needed saving too), well…there were other thing on her mind. Mostly Serah.

And now it’s money. Tonight, at least, she’s going to have to be selfish and forget once again about Hope. _But isn’t that all I’ve done?_

She laughs aloud. She’s still laughing as she finds the gaggle of women she’s searching out, and slips into their ranks like she’s always been there.

.

She lies to Serah. Says she’s found another waitress job when that’s not it. Not at all. Another thing she’s hiding. Serah doesn’t question it that day, but Claire knows she can’t hide it forever. She still looks for a proper job. Nothing stands out.

Then Serah asks if she’s talked to the Estheims recently and she hasn’t.

                ‘Why not?’ Serah asks. ‘I know Hope doesn’t want to see us, but have you tried talking on the phone to him?’

She blinks. ‘You’ve talked to him…on the phone?’

                ‘Yup.’ And Serah sounds pretty happy with herself too. ‘I’ve been telling him all about the fantasy novels I make my children read.’ Trash, in Claire’s opinion, but Serah’s always had a perchance for them. _The whole point is they’re impossible_. And in this world, magic is thrown in with all of that. ‘It’s strange hearing his voice change like it does, but –‘

Her breath catches. ‘Don’t – ‘ _Don’t what?_ There’s no harm in talking over the phone, is there? But isn’t that what she said? That the words were the only weapon they have against the God in this world. _If it’s our weapon, then it’s Bhunivelze’s weapon too._

Serah is silent for a moment. ‘Are you afraid, Claire?’ she asks finally.

Maybe she is, a little bit.

                ‘Afraid of Bhunivelze…or of Hope?’

                ‘How can I be afraid of Hope?’ she asks tiredly, but the answer is obvious and twofold.

.

She picks up the phone, then hangs it up again. Serah has given her the perfect solution and yet she still can’t manage it.

Is it because it’s perfect for Serah and she’s not Serah? Or is she really afraid?

She doesn’t want to keep on thinking about it. She does. But she doesn’t get past this point until something cracks somewhere else.


	17. Chapter 17

 

He thinks they’re going to vanish from his life again. He hopes they will, because he can feel a longing for them that’s too potent, too strong, to be safe. So he pushes them away instead. Knows that Bhunivelze can hate, and use, and that they’re all pawns in God’s big game that he hasn’t yet managed to lose. It was always part of his objective to observe the world through human eyes, in a human form.

 _And now you know how powerless humans can be_. But humans are strong as well. The strength that knocked a God off his throne, that defeated the Fal’Cie and changed the past, the present and the future. The strength that also led to hundreds, of not more, avoidable deaths. That had most of the world destroyed, Cocoon destroyed, New Cocoon abandoned up in the sky except for him, the lonely sentinel looking after it on God’s whim.

His soul is in too many pieces to be put back together in this life. It’s not impossible, if the Saviour could save every living person in the old world and Vanille the dead – but by that point he was neither living nor dead, the only one aside from the Saviour herself that escaped the purification process.

_Or rather…I had been purified, by God. I’m just tainted now…with what little scraps of chaos I’ve put back together…_

He laughs, because he sounds like a scarecrow who’s gotten the stuffing knocked out of him and he’s working to put it back. Fickle stuffing: straw that’ll catch fire with sun and glass, let alone a lit match or a torch or bonfire. It’s Serah’s fault, he thinks, and there’s a hint of both affection and blame in that thought. Serah has been telling him about The Wizard of Oz in her last few phone calls.

It had really been a good idea, at first. Something no-one had tried before but hearing those fairytales that not even his experiences in the old world could make him believe possible was…soothing. A dream nightmares couldn’t slip into, that Bhunivelze couldn’t slip into – but that had turned out to be wrong, if only because it was _Serah_ telling those stories. His parents had caught on to the idea. His mother read him tales from their family collection. His father borrowed tapes from the library so he wasn’t listening to lyrics or instrumental music all the time, and it was nice. Relaxing. Fun. A tale he could immerse himself into more deeply than his own tale.

But now, sometimes, he finds himself listening to her voice instead of her tales, his mind wandering to regions he has to snatch it back from and the screams are vibrating in his throat, on his tongue, on his lips – but his mother notices and hangs up the phone before they can escape like the tails of a whip and catch her.

And when it’s over and he’s back in control, he cries and shakes and mutters, like a litany: ‘she shouldn’t, she shouldn’t.’ But she does, and he allows it.

He shouldn’t. But he does. Because it’s comfortable and that’s what he’s always looking for: comfort.

.

His feet heal and there’s no lasting damage on either sole or the infection that had snuck in. But still, he doesn’t leave. His parents are watching, wary, but if he leaves, he won’t get to hear more stories and it’s a childish thought that’s stuck there and he just goes with it. For now, anyway, when Bhunivelze does nothing, can do nothing, because she’s so far away.

Until he finds himself wandering one night and dashes back home and barricades himself in with the extension line.

They must tell her, his parents, because she doesn’t launch into her tale straight away. Instead, she asks how he is, if he’s scared, what he’s got against the door (nothing now, though the bookshelf had been there at some point), why his parents can’t get in (because he’s done something to the lock and he’s not quite sure how to reverse it, even if he wanted to and he doesn’t) and whose idea it was to have his bedroom on the second floor (the architect’s, he supposes? He doesn’t really know…). Finally she sighs, and promises to call back in another ten minutes. She does, and they pick up The Wizard of Oz once again…or, rather, she does and he listens silently for the most part, phone on speaker and out of reach so he doesn’t have the urge to cradle or crush it.

That afternoon, there’s a lot of banging on the other side of his door. Someone trying to break the lock. They don’t manage it and he’s shrunken on to the opposite wall, curled up in his back and half relieved, half-cursing. And both hungry and thirsty as well. He’s had neither thing for over twenty four hours at that point but that’s not new either and the dizziness that settles in is always welcome. Another cloud to bury himself within, another blanket to wrap around his frail body and cocoon the imprisoned God along with him.

A hundred and sixty nine years in the ark. And now another sixteen here.

.

He thinks they’re trying to actually break the door now. There’s an odd drilling noise, anyway. He’s still on the bed. Face down on the blankets and they blur as he tries to pull himself up. He gives up. Why bother? He’ll be dragged out of bed when he needs to be, and how long has it been, anyway?

 _I think I take more care of myself when I’m not at home._ And he laughs quietly, his body trembling from the effort. His head is still heavy, heavy and crushing the parasitic God with its weight. From the lack of water, probably. If not that, then the lack of fresh air. His windows only open so far.

All the things his parents have done, to try and make him both safe and happy. _I’m sorry, Mum, Dad. But I have to fight this._

Because he’s already seen the nightmare to its bitter end and he’ll flee from it until he outruns it, and that will never happen.

But his mouth and throat are both bone dry and his body too heavy to lift up again and he knows he needs water, and soon.

He also knows it takes more days than two to actually die from dehydration and even longer for food. It’s slow, and cruel, and impossible because the human body will be a ravaging beast by then and they’ll seek that water or food on all fours without a hint of sense or restraint or compassion. He doesn’t know why he knows this, why it’s more than just an innocent curiosity but it’s not. Death never was just an innocent curiosity and he can only suppose that, at some point in his old life, he researched it quite thoroughly. Death, and time. Both those things he knows more about than the average person. Both of those things dragging along in chains for him.

.

Light suddenly spills into his room. Light like Bhunivelze, swallowing him hole and for a moment he is really there, trapped in the Ark and immobile without a single bond in sight and with that God whispering in his ears…

He doesn’t know how long it lasts. But the light dims eventually and he finds himself in a hospital bed once again. His body is still heavy, a prisoner of its own weight moreso than the straps that bind him loosely to the bed. They know. They always know. And here, at least, there’s no escape.

At least the God is silent in his mind, exhausted from all that whispering and he remembers none of it: the whispers, yes, but no words. The whispers and that bright light that screams of God.

And the first, and only, voice he hears… it’s her and he can never forget or mistake her voice. ‘Lightning.’ Her name falls off his lips with only long-written memories echoing the title of Saviour after it. That, and…something else. ‘So it’s almost over. The last thirteen days of the world.’

.

It’s Serah’s fault. No, not Serah’s fault. Not Hope’s fault either, whatever he managed to do to the lock in his bedroom that left him without food and water for almost two whole days before the Estheims managed to get someone to break down the door. It’s almost laughable, that the rich family who’ve invested so much in trying to keep their son safe and at home find it backfiring on them…but who can blame them? Who can blame anyone, really, except Bhunivelze?

And now… now she’s caved and gone with Serah and Snow to visit the hospital yet again, even though she’s sure it’ll be no different to the other times.

And yet it is. Eyes that don’t seem to even see her stare at her. Grey eyes, because the contacts are back in and no-one’s bothered taking them out. Probably not the concern when he’s got needles hooked on to both arms and restraints binding ankles and wrists.

But it’s not the eyes. Blank eyes are one thing. Even her name, whispered like it is. Like every time she’d stepped foot onto the Ark.

But his _words…_ ‘So it’s almost over. The last thirteen days of the world.’

Exactly like when she awoke on the Ark.

_Are you trying to tell me something, Hope? Or…_

_‘I wasn’t talking about the world.’_

She remembers that. She _remembers._ And she’d never had the chance to ask again. ‘Hope,’ she begins. She knows the answer now. To that question at least. But this. ‘What’s almost over?’


	18. Chapter 18

 

                ‘What’s almost over?’ Lightning – the Saviour – Claire – asks.

Shouldn’t he be happier to see her? She breaks the monochrome, the pure white that’s engulfed him for so long – and yet she also brings something with her, something changing, something frightening… She’s kick-started something, and it could go off the tracks or stay on them and it was mostly out of their control.

                ‘The end of the world,’ he answers, and then he blinks because it’s not an answer, but an echo. A conversation they’ve already had before, in the correct context. But his mind is muddled. He can’t align the past with what is now. What _is_ now? ‘Is the world ending?’

                ‘Not as far as I know.’ Her voice is shaking. She’s trying to keep it steady and calm, but it’s shaking anyway.

                ‘I wonder…’ The world’s not ending. It’s the new world, and it’s his mind tangled with its parasite and it’s past. ‘What’ll happen if the world goes this time?’ _Is that what you want?_

There’s no answer. When it comes to what that errant God actually wants, there’s never an answer, and it’s frustrating. Because he’s wandering blind. And that probably suits the God _very_ nicely. That was all he did before, too. Walk blind, and lead the Saviour around equally blind.

She broke out. He didn’t. She’s free from him. He’s not.

                ‘I don’t know.’ Her tone is wrong. She’s said those words before. He can’t remember when, or where, or why (maybe when they were all l’Cie? Or maybe it was when she was trying to save someone – Noel or Sazh or Snow) but he knows the tone was different then. Is different now. ‘It’s up to humanity to find the strength to save it once again.’

                ‘Really…’ He hums. He feels laughter bubbling in his throat and he swallows it down. ‘I wonder where all our human strength has gotten to?’

.

It’s…almost a normal conversation. Sort of. If she dips her head and squints through one of those weird cellophane glasses Serah sometimes takes for her students. She wonders if Hope’s managed to mistake the hospital room for the Ark. His voice sounds like it at first, echoing the past.

It’s her answers that are different, that spoil the illusion. And how many times does she have to shatter these dreams of his? Built on innocence. Built on revenge. Built on a hope that turns out to be impossible, and now…what are they built on now? A God who’d taken up a permanent residence inside his head and he doesn’t belong there.

But it’s Hope’s face, Hope’s body and most of the time Hope’s voice and that stops her from doing anything about it.

And then the questions. The conversation’s moved on from the past, into the future while leaping none too gently over the present. What makes him ask so suddenly, she wonders? What makes him lock himself in his room for two days without food and water, for that matter? And how does he manage to do it in a way that forces the Estheims to saw through the door? _Kid’s always been too clever for his own good._ And she wonders if the God had seen a possible death by dehydration coming. _Too macabre, Claire_ , she scolds herself. And killing Bhunivelze this time round…impossible to do without killing Hope as well. Breaking someone with words alone… just wasn’t possible. It took more than words. It took feelings, actions – even the playground bully didn’t caw his prey with only words.

And his last words make her crumble.

_‘I wonder where all our human strength has gotten to?’_

And she knows. Maybe it’s egotistical, maybe it’s just their efforts to run away from things, but it’s still the truth – a truth. And she hugs him while she says it. ‘We’ve left you to fight alone, haven’t we?’

At least she’s had Serah, and Snow, even before Noel showed up unexpectedly on her doorstep. And Noel’s had Yuel, and Serah. And Vanille and Fang have had each other. And Snow’s had Serah too. But Hope – Hope’s only had his parents and family’s different, family’s not enough. She knows because she’s spent an eternity chasing after Serah and she’s seen the consequences _and yet I’m still screwing over my own life, aren’t I?_ But that’s nothing but her own pride and cowardliness.

                ‘Good.’ Hope coughs suddenly. His throat’s still raw. The tubes are feeding his veins but not his mouth, though he ignores it and talks on anyway. ‘It was right.’

_‘It was the right thing to do.’_

                ‘It’s never right,’ she whispers, barely loud enough to be heard. ‘You said that last time too…and that’s a regret I’ll always carry.’

.

Her feet take her wandering. Her body, as always, is on high alert but she’s forgotten, forgotten just where she’s been walking in the last few weeks until her muscles are screaming and she’s pinned to the wall with a lecherous grin.

Her face is still stained by the tears she’d shed in that hospital room. And the kid wasn’t even in any danger this time round. _Once they got some water into him,_ she reminds herself. _Once they shaved off the seizure and the delirium._

She’s distracted again. She’s been doing this too much recently. Letting her body do all the work but her body can’t handle the same calibre of fighting in this world as it did in the old one. She can handle drunkards just fine but the folk looking for a street walker and more than happy to get a feisty one – not so well. She’s spent too long running for that.

And…it’s what she’s here for, in a sense.

It should disgust her. It doesn’t.

Killing should have disgusted her once upon a time. It didn’t.

.

She’s presented herself as feisty. She gets treated as such. When Serah and Snow drop by to pick her up the next day, she’s a walking disaster and they know it.

Snow speaks first. ‘What the hell, Sis?’

Serah doesn’t say it quite like that, but she means the same thing.

She doesn’t answer them. ‘Can I borrow some make up?’ she asks. ‘Don’t want Hope freaking out – ‘

                ‘What about us?’ Serah asks, in a small voice.

Claire loses her own.

                ‘Tell us,’ she pleads.

She doesn’t want to, but it’s so much easier to cave now, bruised in both body and soul as she is.

                ‘I was –‘ Easy to cave, but not so easy to say. ‘I’ve been –‘

Serah’s small arms encircle her waist. She stiffens. Her ribs are still sore, but even if they weren’t, even after the shower she’s had at four in the morning she knows the real reason why she’s frozen like that, why Serah’s already withdrawing with hurt plastered on her face, why Snow’s got a big comforting hand on her shoulder –

                ‘Streetwalking!’ she bursts out, and her skin burns. She knows – She knows and she knows there were other choices too, easier choices, _better_ choices. ‘It’s my own damn pride.’ And she’s crying. ‘And me just running away from everything: responsibility, who I even _am –_ ‘

Serah’s arms are around her again, and this time they both ignore the stiffness in her limbs, in her back. And Snow’s free hand is in her hair, ruffling it like she’s _Hope_ and she might’ve snorted if she’s not busy battling with her tears instead.

                ‘I know,’ she sobs, before either of them can say it (and they don’t, maybe because they’ve already pierced it together). ‘I know I could’ve come to you guys.’

                ‘Damn straight you could have,’ mutters Snow.

They don’t ask why she didn’t.

.

_Everything at once… Maybe this is what Hope meant._

They sit on her couch, their visit to the hospital deferred. Serah’s made them tea and it sits on the coffee table, cooling. None of them are really sure what to say. They all know though they have to talk.

                ‘It’s not just me,’ Claire sighs, finally. ‘It’s not just Hope. I think we all forgot…just what we spent an eternity fighting for.’

                ‘Happiness.’ Snow closes his eyes. ‘Our fairytale ending. Lots of mini-Snows and mini-Serahs and even mini-Sis running around our big house in the country – ‘

                ‘I’m sorry,’ says Serah, knowing it’s mostly her fault that dream hasn’t yet come true.

                ‘We weren’t ready,’ Snow replied. He knows it’s not, it’s never been. Though they all have a bit of the blame to shoulder, a bit of responsibility to bear. ‘You always said…adopting felt like giving up.’

Another problem. The only one Claire’s been aware of for years and has done nothing about. ‘It’s not the only way,’ she points out. ‘Adopting, I mean. There are treatments. IVF.’

Serah snorts at that. ‘We can’t afford it,’ she says.

And Claire knows she can’t help them either. If she had a better job, a _proper_ job. ‘Responsibility,’ she sighs. ‘If I’d just gotten a proper job from the get go, instead of running around looking for one that didn’t come with strings attached when there’s no such thing…’ Her wrists are bruised as well. The bruises she can stare at with having both hands on her lap. Stark reminders.

                ‘Please stop.’ Serah’s staring at them too, reaching out a tentative hand and ghosting them. ‘You don’t want to hurt yourself like this, do you?’

No. No, she doesn’t. Too many barriers are crumbling down in this new life of hers.

                ‘I was just running away.’

She knows. She _knows_.

                ‘It’s okay to run.’ It’s Snow. Surprisingly, Snow. ‘If you know you’re going to get killed standing and fighting instead.’

The tickle of a smile flickers across her lips. ‘This is coming from the Hero who never had a care for his own life?’

He shrugs. ‘I’ve got too much blood on my hands to not care.’

She nods quietly. ‘Fair enough.’

It’s so much easier to stop running when you’ve tripped and fallen, then if you’re still going full speed ahead. But whether she can stop running or not – that’s a whole other matter?


	19. Chapter 19

 

He's going home today. Again. Free from his restraints and at the end of another cycle of clarity and white and why do the two of them have to come hand in hand? He's safest in the hospital. He's also the most raw, the most in pain – and at least now it's only the drugs and other things they pump into him, and no currents.

And the Saviour, chasing after the last soul she still wants to safe, whether she's realised that or not.

 _No…_ No, that's Bhunivelze's thoughts, not his own.

But something's distracting him. Not the pink roots in her skull that are rather prominent now that she's stopped redying her hair (in contrary to his own, which are always black for some reason when they're new, before going grey in a matter of days).

It's…something else. Something foreign, something that both draws him in – and pushes him away.

.

If her last visit to Hope had been one of the best so far in this new world, this current one has jumped up to the position of worst.

'There's something black…right here.' And his frigid fingers poke at her stomach: at the piercing that had been licked by more tongues than she cared to count, and around it.

Her piercing is gold, not black. Will never _go_ black. And while the colour isn't anything special to Hope, it is to _Bhunivelze_ and she latches onto his insinuation quickly enough.

And, rightly so, she panics. Internally, so she doesn't give that smug bastard the satisfaction, doesn't freak poor Hope out underneath, so she doesn't think that maybe he's right and she's jumped to the right conclusion and however is she going to handle a _baby_ on top of everything else –

And then she's stumbling back, flailing for balance, and one of Hope's IV poles crashed to the ground. Hope screams and pulls back to the head of the bed – and then the pieces come together. Him crouched, knees braced and arms outstretched.

He. Pushed. Her. And doing that has managed to pull out one of his IV lines. The commotion attracts a nurse, who sees what's happening and presses the buzzer and summons a few more.

Claire is still trying to wrap her head around the fact that _Hope just pushed me_ when she's ushered out.

.

They restrain him. And sedate him. He can feel them, no longer comfortable but tight and binding and only the heavy fog in his brain stops his mind from slipping away.

Instead, he trembles and cries and there's nobody to comfort him. Just people, cold and far away, asking why. Why did he –

_Why did I –_

' – push Miss Farron like that?'

He can't answer. He doesn't know. There's something different. Something _somethingsomething –_

They prick him again and he plunges gratefully into the darkness.

.

'I don't know,' says Claire honestly, when they question her. They've examined her and found nothing. She even admits she's had unprotected sex recently and if they wouldn't mind screening for pregnancy as well – but they're professional and do as she asks without comment, and come back with nothing.

That doesn't ease her mind, however. It could just be too early to tell. But she may have jumped to the wrong conclusion as well. What else would the God of Light see as black?

 _Everything human related?_ Her mind, or Lumina, piques up sarcastically.

She snorts. Probably. He didn't understand humans: their dreams, their emotions, their enduring faith... Nor does he seem to understand human fragility, thinking souls can be released from their torment with a few material things. If that were the case, Serah and Snow would be living happily ever after in the house they'd always dreamed of and with the children they've always dreamed of… but that's a medical issue too, she reminds herself. She can't blame everything on a God.

…well, she _can_ , per say, but that doesn't make it right, or viable.

.

_Maybe Hope can confirm._

The thought's a good one, but getting a confirmation from him proves harder than she thinks. First it's the hospital barring all visitors. Another psychological evaluation – which she thinks is a bit excessive considering she didn't even fall and hadn't been hurt in the least – but they do it anyway. And transfer him for a week before releasing him back home.

Then there's the next week and another negative pregnancy test, this time a home one she's appropriated from Serah's medicine cabinet, and Serah and Snow are both well aware of why she has and have, as usual, waved off the weak promise that she'll pay them back). And Bartholomew or Nora waving away her calls. 'I'm sorry,' Nora apologises, after the third time that second week. 'Hope hasn't been doing much except staring at his wall.'

'I can come visit,' she volunteers.

But neither of them are sure it's a good idea.

.

The third week gives it away. The two lines instead of one, and Serah drags her to the doctor to be properly confirmed.

Two days later, it's official. She's pregnant. And single and jobless and about to lose her apartment again. And she calls to let the Estheims know, and is surprised when they don't seem to be.

'Hope told you,' she sighs.

'He told himself,' Bartholomew corrects. 'Has been muttering something about having killed the baby, too.'

She goes cold at that. 'It's too early,' she says mechanically. 'A couple more weeks before they can do any sort of imaging. It was just confirmed today.'

'I…see.' He doesn't see. It's obvious in his tone. He's wondering how Hope can know for sure when she's only herself found out today. 'Congratulations, Miss – Claire.'

'Thank you,' she replies. 'It's more a case of irresponsibility than anything else, though.'

But she's not going to kill an innocent life for that.

Serah and Noel are right. Here, she has to start being responsible again.

.

His father tells him, that Lightning's called and says she's pregnant – was probably pregnant that day in the hospital too) and has just found out.

He knows. He already knows. He knows because Bhunivelze knows and Bhunivelze realised it that day. He doesn't know how. Souls don't come in straight away, though scientists and religion have long argued the exact date. More in this new world than the old because there are many more religions, many more Gods, many more people to come up with theories and give them light and life. But the general consensus is that the soul isn't immediately there, not until the container has enough form to keep it bound and it's just not there that early in the process. So how does Bhunivelze know?

 _Well, he is a God._ And that's the crux of the matter, the reason he won't ever win and he's not even allowed to lose. _I need a way out of here._

The walls of his room cave in on him. He's been looking for that way out almost since he was born, it seems.

.

'I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'msorrysorrysorry –'

She finally gets through to Hope, and this is the result, him crying over the speaker, tumbling over his words.

'Hush,' she interrupts him, as gently as she can. 'It's okay. No harm, and I know it's not you – '

'It is!' And that gives her pause.

'Hope…'

'It felt weird. _You_ felt weird.' She can barely understand him, his words tumbling as they are and there's another voice in the background – Nora, trying to keep him calm. Still, Claire doesn't grasp the next words at all.

And then she does. 'How long do you think it is before babies get a soul?' And his voice is flat, emotionless, like the Hope from the Ark.

'I – I don't know.' Hope excels in making her stammer, she thinks ruefully. And making her short-tempered before that. And making her raw in a way only Serah could before manage.

'There are various theories.' And now there's a hint of the scientist buried in there as well. 'The average consensus seems to be between fourty and a hundred and twenty days. At least six weeks.'

Its three weeks now, she thinks. Almost four. According to the average consensus, no soul. That's almost a depressing thought – but makes a sort of sense. There's no sense of body until at least week four. No brain or heart. She's learnt all this from her doctor, who's made sure to pump her up on vitamins to make sure her baby's not born with a hole in its head or something just as bad. 'You wouldn't believe the people who don't realise they're pregnant until months are gone,' she's been told.

She might not have either if it hadn't been for a certain boy and God.

'Bhunivelze can't sense human souls anyway. But the absence wouldn't matter when there isn't one yet.'

She sees the question now. 'The majority of the world might be wrong.'

'They're not.' He sounds sure – in the way the Hope of the Ark was sure when explaining the end of the world. 'There was no extra soul, but still… An empty doll, a vessel that will soon acquire…' His voice faded.

'Hope!' she cried.

'Stay away, Light,' he says, finally, and this time there's a bit of feeling there. The Hope in her heart before she saw the empty throne on the final day. 'It's too dangerous for the both of you.'

'That's what you've been saying since the beginning.' She half smiles, because she knows where this is going. Exactly where. But she wants to cry instead. _Can I blame the pregnancy hormones yet? Or is it too early?_ 'Do you expect us to just abandon you?'

Another pause, and then, like every word is a struggle: 'I don't want you to abandon me. I want you to let me go.'


	20. Chapter 20

 

_I could have killed a baby. A – not even a baby. A foetus._

And that’s enough to tell him he needs to break this impasse. And soon. Now, preferably. But no brilliant idea comes to mind and even if he does, he can assume a certain God is ready to force his way into the body’s command centre to put a brake on it. What he really needs is somebody else’s help but who the hell is going to do that? It’s bad enough, with all those arguments against abortion and euthanasia and he’s not qualified for either.

_Would you manage to stop me, even then?_

He wonders how long it will be before Bhunivelze just accepts that humans aren’t meant to last forever, including this one. Will he lose his mind and not come back before then? Will he be a broken puppet if he does, or an animal out of control and locked away permanently in a cage? What? What will it be?

_Patience…_

He laughs at the whisper in his mind. Not at the sentiment, but if only he could still be patient. He can’t. But his laughter is due to the presence of yet another voice in his mind because the voice of optimism died a very long time ago and it can’t be the same. It doesn’t sound like his voice anyway, his voice in all the different incarnations he’s heard it in and he’s heard a good many of them.

.

It’s an extra weight on his soul. He hasn’t killed in this new world. Or, he doesn’t think he has. But he’s come close. Himself, mostly. But not always. And that little life growing in Light’s body is the newest and latest and most fragile.

Even after he’s apologised, it won’t leave him alone.

_Why do you even care?_

He doesn’t answer. Never answers. Just keeps him alive like it’s a necessary thing, like he’ll drown into the chaos entirely if this last link is cut off and maybe he will, he _hopes_ he will but that thread just won’t _cut_.

_Patience…._

                ‘How!’ he screams at the voice. ‘How much longer?’

He doesn’t respect a reply. He’s surprised to get one. _Thirteen days._

.

Ten days. Is that supposed to be symbolic, he wonders? Or just his mind making things up to try and comfort him. He doesn’t know. A part of him wants to tell Lighting. Another part of him doesn’t want to talk to her again, lest she gets the idea to come down and she can’t. And he can’t get the words out anyway. Just ineligible sounds that force their way past his throat as he wriggles uselessly.

Thirteen days is a time limit that has the God in his mind going crazy. Luckily, he’s back in the hospital. Restrained so he can’t hurt anyone, hurt anything. He’s not sure how it’s happened this time but he won’t complain. So long as he actually _is_ dead at the end of the thirteen day limit.

And even his parents’ presences can’t make him feel guilty of the thought.

.

Hope’s in the hospital again. Bartholomew calls Light despite Hope’s demand, and she calls Snow and Serah.

And Serah drops by her apartment the next day with an extra bit of news.

                ‘I worked out the doll thing,’ she explains. ‘It’s a common supernatural motif, that empty dolls can suck out souls, because they’re in essence soulless themselves. Containers. I think what Hope is saying is that a foetus in the stage where it doesn’t have a soul is similar to a doll.’

                ‘Goddess Etro takes out the souls of the dead and puts them into the hearts of the newly born,’ Claire repeats. Bhunivelze’s words…or was it her, as the Saviour? She can’t quite remember. They’d both tethered on the issue. ‘Is Hope worried Bhunivelze will jump ship?’ _It’s what he wants, but…_

                ‘Do you think Yuel and Caius will allow it?’ Serah returns. ‘They are the Goddess of Death now, aren’t they?’

                ‘You’re right.’ And she smiles, because Serah is right. No way Caius is going to let the god who used him so enter the world again if he can help it. And he probably can. He’s stronger than her, after all. Defeated her in Valhalla. Stabbed himself on Noel’s sword to end his endless life because no-one else could do it for him.

But later, alone, she frowns. Two burning questions remained. If offered the chance to save Hope by sacrificing this child growing inside of her, would she take it? _But for Serah… I already sacrificed you once._

The other question was what _Hope_ was afraid of? Bhunivelze jumping ship, or something else she’s failing to see. _Actually, he’ll be even more powerless in a baby’s body…_ More likely it is the other way around, she realises. Hope who’s not always fully there, who’s the weaker link right now, according to Serah and Snow and their report of indistinguishable mumbling and trashing and pretty much no coherence to talk about at all. In that case, she probably _should_ be nearby.

But that also means he’ll be dead in the next eight months, and that’s painful blow to her gut, exactly where the new life is taking shape.

.

Thirteen days. The voice promises him and it delivers. He is suddenly, and dizzyingly, spiralling through the black until something – someone – catches him.

                ‘Hope Estheim.’ He doesn’t recognise the voice, or the hundreds of young female ones that echo after it.

There’s a roar from somewhere deep, and then –

                ‘That’s the rest of Bhunivelze.’ That man again.

He opens his eyes. It’s still black, but he can make out shapes in it. A tall, elaborately dressed man. And young girl and her many twins, reflected on the backdrop like a bunch of little mosaics.

                ‘We are the Goddess of Death.’ It’s the girls, speaking in tandem, their voices stretching through the black. ‘And this is the Chaos.’

                ‘You saved Lightning,’ he realises. He’s mostly slipped away, but he remembers that it was _Lightning_ Bhunivelze had planned to take Etro’s empty throne.

                ‘ _You_ saved her,’ the man corrects. ‘And now, she will save you.’

He doesn’t understand. He’s not sure because the memories are slipping away like water in a stream, that the name Lightning he’d just uttered before is an echo now, that Etro is death and nothing more, that this was the realm of death and chaos and he was free, finally free. ‘Aren’t I already saved?’

                ‘Not yet.’ And he’s falling again, falling and screaming suddenly because he can’t remember what he needed saving from but he knows it was bad and he can’t stand being caught in their net for a moment longer. ‘But you will be soon. I promise you.’

He can’t see anymore. The figures – what did they look like again? – are gone. But their voices are still there. ‘It’s time to be reborn.’

He’s lost all sense of time as well, by then. Too much to even wonder why he doesn’t get a break.

                ‘And don’t worry about Bhunivelze. He will sleep here for an eternity. An eternity, like all eternities, that won’t last forever.’

The words disappear as soon as he hears them. Strings of words so that he loses the beginning before he gets to the end and understands none of it. The words are warm though…and he thinks, though he can’t be sure, that they’re for someone else’s benefit as well.

.

Not eight months. More like a week and a bit. The doctors can’t explain it, even with an autopsy.

Claire’s close to fourty days post-conception by then. Or she thinks she is. They don’t let her go to the funeral. Still worried about floating souls and things. She respects them, but she sends flowers anyway.

_Is this…all I can do?_

But she knew a long time ago she’d failed Hope once again. But it was quite another knowing there’s no second chances. Enough to drown out the unmistakable relief to know Bhunivelze’s last ties with this world are gone as well.

Unless…

_‘Don’t worry about Bhunivelze. He will sleep for eternity.’_

She jerks upright. There’s no-one here except her. Her and the papers scattered around her she’d been studying. Serah’s idea, again. Go to college. Get a decent job. Work her way up in the world now that she’s made her resolve. And she has. To stop running away. Her hair’s a mess right now but in a year or two it’ll be back to pure pink again and the whispers will probably follow her and she’ll accept or ignore them. They’re not dangerous. Never were. Not in this world.

‘Who are you?’ she whispers.

The voices don’t answer her question. But they do speak.

 _‘Look after both your second chances.’_ Female. Echoing. Realisation draws. ‘Yuel.’ The many Yuels, to be precise. Who become the Goddess of Death so she won’t have to, so she can be here, so…

The tears stream down her face, and this time, she has no problem blaming those pregnancy hormones.

_Both your second chances…_

_I get it._

.

                ‘I’ve got a name picked out,’ she tells Nora, over the phone.

The other woman is surprised, surprised to see they’ve kept contact with her and Bartholomew but how can they not?

And how can she not tell her this much, at least. Not her suspicions, because she can’t be sure yet, can’t prove it yet. But this, she can. ‘Boy or girl, I want to name them Hope.’

                ‘I…see.’ And it’s a shaky answer from Nora, before a pause and a steadier. ‘Thank you, Claire, for looking after him for all this time.’

                ‘I haven’t, much,’ Claire says sadly, ‘but I promise, I won’t fail this time.’

                ‘Visit us some day,’ Nora tells her, before Claire hangs up the phone. ‘Bring your child as well.’

                ‘Of course.’ Even if they’re not Hope’s parents in his next life, they still deserve this…and more.

.

She’s less sure, when five months later she wakes up from the anaesthesia to find a little baby boy in the incubator by her hospital bed. Not quite what she expects: red and swollen and so _tiny_ but the doctors tell her the APGAR scores and birth weight and head circumference are all as good as can be expected for a premature baby and she can more or less relax.

But the baby has blue eyes and almost black hair. Neither of those things mean much, she’s told. Lots of babies have blue eyes and they grow out of it. And hair colour at birth doesn’t have a lot of bearing on what colour they’ll have for the rest of their life as well.

And he does. The black roots, surprisingly, stay, but the rest of the hair goes silver, almost white. She’d never thought about it before, but now she thinks back and realises it’s always been like that, since she first laid eyes on him in the old world. And by the time he’s six months old and growing teeth, his eyes have changed from blue to green as well. But they’re a warm green, darker than Bhunivelze’s, and there’s that whisper in her mind again. _‘Bhunivelze will sleep for eternity.’_

 _He better,_ she thinks.

And he grows. A fussy baby like babies are, but cute. Grows up nicely, hitting milestones and certain ones earlier than he should. Not fussing too much when she finally starts work (as a sports teacher, of all things and it’s entirely Serah’s fault, she’s sure) and leaves him to be babysat, by Nora Estheim or, mostly, Snow. Auntie Serah teaches him how to read before he starts school so he can stop making castles out of her books instead and, somehow, the presence of a baby in their little family of three (because a studio is no place to raise a baby) have calmed Serah and Snow as well. The first baby, even if it’s not from their bodies, in their dream.

This Hope knows nothing of the world of old. But she plans to tell him. Because the past teaches lessons: gives hope, fights despair. It’s not the same shacks that bound him before. And she’ll make sure they never become those shackles.

But, for now, he’s an innocent four year old curled in the crook of her elbow and listening to a new bedtime story. His small hands, gloveless, intertwining with her own. And she smiles at him tenderly – and knows that, this time, nothing will stop her saving him, her son in blood and spirit too – and begins. ‘The crystal age is just a legend, from before the world is born.’

He looks up to her with sleepy eyes. Sleepy, warm green eyes. She tweaks his nose, and he giggles.

‘And it ended, before you were born.’

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: And we’ve come to the end. My unexpected campnano project, but I’m happy I finished it nice and snug in April and before my exam as well. Always nice when that happens. Also nice when I can focus most of my energy on one project instead of a hundred of them, lol. Helps that that scene with Bhunivelze, Lightning and puppet!Hope is so addictive.
> 
> Those final lines are from the end of Lightning Returns. I’m sure you guys recognise it, but even so…
> 
> The Hope/Bhunivelze thing – when I first started writing the story, I imagined it like Lightning literally putting her fingers in and dragging Hope’s soul back out. No reason why a bit of Bhunivelze couldn’t be stuck too – especially since Hope’s physical body was destroyed by that point and the soul is far more abstract. This Bhunivelze isn’t strong enough to do much. It’s arguable if he does anything at all, or if all the things Light and Hope associated with Bhunivelze are instead Hope’s traumatic self -reflecting Bhunivelze’s personality. Caius and the Yuels in the Unseen Realm are probably in the best position to determine, but I’m not convinced (I know I wrote the story, but still!) that their words can say concretely anything. It might be just be the consequences of Bhunivelze being laid to rest that they were talking about.
> 
> Why Hope dying and being reborn is a second chance – arguable again (yep, I argued with myself on this point), but most people in the old world die before getting to the new one, if not by the test of time, then by Bhunivelze in that final showdown. The exception is Light, and possibly Mog, Hope and the Eidolons. The first and last don’t play a role in this fic, but Hope is the crux here. Bhunivelze does snap his neck, and then crush the body – but that’s the body. The soul’s gone by that point so does that qualify as death, or no? What confuses me about the ending is that the Hope Light rescues is still fourteen years old, when Hope’s soul should be more in line with his twenty-seven year old self, like in trailer of memories. Which is admittedly what sparks this fic in the first place. So, anyway, the Hope in this fic is one following the idea that Hope didn’t die in the old world to be reborn, and therefore doesn’t get the benefit of dying and returning to chaos for a little r&r. Which he gets this time round.
> 
> And why Light is the mother – the simple answer is I’ve used this plunny in another fic and loved it, so it decided to spring up again when I was thinking of a way to end this one. The more reasonable answer is this is Light’s another chance as well, and it is one of the few ways that Light is going to put anything about Serah (since the fic decided early on it wasn’t interested in romance).
> 
> And…that’s it. First FF multichap and it certainly took an interesting turn. Thank you to all of you who’ve read and supported this fic, and I’ll see you guys again with another one…one day! Too many fandoms to play around with…


End file.
